Election Fraud Conviction of Community Organizer in Michigan

Christian Adams at Election Law Center has a good scoop on a recent election fraud conviction of a local left-wing political activist in Southwest Michigan:

A far-left community organizer is going to jail for at least 2 and a half years for election fraud in Michigan.  Edward Pinkney was sentenced to up to 10 years in prison for rigging a recall election for the mayor of Benton Harbor Michigan.

This is your classic case of petition shenanigans including Pinkney fraudulently changing dates on petitions and having people sign them multiple times. As Adams writes, “[a]t the root of the crime was a recall election.  Far left groups had targeted the mayor of Benton Harbor arguing in the (ironically named) ‘People’s Tribune’ that ‘an economic system that doesn’t feed, clothe, and house its people must be overturned and replaced with a system that meets the needs of the people.’ ”

It seems like in many instances petition fraudsters are able to plea or negotiate out of having to serving prison time, but as it turns out this wasn't Pinkney's first offense or even his first election fraud offense. As the local news reports:

His first run in with the law was 1988 for assault with a dangerous weapon out of California, followed in 1990 by a theft conviction out of St. Louis, Missouri, then in 1999 was convicted in Berrien County of embezzlement and in 2007 was convicted 4 felony counts of violating election laws.

As we have seen in past convictions of voter fraud, activists rallied to Pinkney’s side demanding he be freed although apparently most were not local residents: “The judge received more then 100 letters of support for Pinkney, but noted that many letters were duplicates. He said of all those he received only one letter was from a resident of Southwest Michigan.” Democratic City Commissioner Marcus Muhammed went as far as to call the court convicting Pinkney a "kangaroo court."