An official in the Georgia Republican party who has said the 2020 election was stolen was ordered to pay a $5,000 fine and will receive a public reprimand for voting illegally nine times, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on Thursday.
Brian Pritchard, the first vice-president of the state Republican party, illegally voted in nine elections from 2008 to 2010 while he was still on probation for a 1996 forgery felony conviction in Pennsylvania. Georgia and 14 other states require people to have completed their sentence, including probation, before they can vote. About 163,475 people could not vote in Georgia in 2022 because they were on felony probation, according to an estimate by The Sentencing Project, a criminal justice non-profit.
Pritchard, told Lisa Boggs, the administrative law judge overseeing the case, he believed his criminal sentence had expired and was not aware the criminal court in Pennsylvania had extended his probation until 2011 for allegedly failing to repay $38,000 in restitution.
Boggs wrote in her ruling she did not find that credible, noting that he had appeared in court several times while his probation was extended.
The state board of elections began investigating the matter in 2015 and referred it to a local district attorney’s office and the state attorney general in 2021. The state attorney general referred it to the administrative law judge the following year.
The Georgia Republican party did not respond to a request for comment.
Read more here from The Guardian.
