On November 23, a Pennsylvania state court judge acquitted Jake Towne of charges related to a forged sheet of ballot access petitions from the 2018 election. Towne was a Libertarian nominee for state legislature in 2018. Leaders of both major parties in the area had sought his conviction because one of the sheets on his petition had forged signatures. Towne did not commit the forgeries. Thanks to Richard Schwarz for this news.
See his statement of what happened to him from his facebook page: “I was found not guilty yesterday in my criminal case. I was maliciously targeted for my efforts to combat government corruption. This was a politically-motivated attack by both the Democrats and Republicans against the free speech of third parties. The state GOP Executive Director, and local Republicans began a “fishing expedition,” hoping to find me guilty of something. Attorney General Joshua Shapiro, a Democrat, enabled the GOP to escalate a single sheet of bad signatures into a Grand Jury investigation.
I believe three of my own lawyers were working against my best interests. Collectively, they used fear tactics to try to influence my decisions, failed to disclose conflicts of interest, and provided incorrect information about my legal rights. But by far the most glaring acts of malice were those who attempted to destroy my marriage by making false allegations about my wife, Jane Horvath, and urged me to take their unsolicited advice regarding matters unrelated to my case, while advising me to take a plea deal knowing I had not committed a crime. If not for Jane’s enduring support, I would have collapsed under the pressure. Jane did the legal precedent research and fought for me because she knew admitting guilt and being portrayed as a fraud in the public eye would destroy me. I don’t deserve any accolades as Jane was the one keeping me together.
Over the past 3 years, I incurred debts totaling over $50,000 to defend my reputation. I was subjected to a 16-month grand jury investigation and was under arrest for 2 years. Politicians and lawyers arbitrarily interpreted vague laws as a way to manufacture criminal charges. When it became glaringly obvious that there was no basis for this case, instead of backing down the AG scrambled to justify their allegations. They submitted a supplemental brief containing misleading information which compelled Judge Dally to proceed to trial.
The AG repeatedly urged me to plead “no contest” to lesser crimes, although I hadn’t committed any. Unscrupulous former attorneys encouraged me to take the “sweet” plea deals. Fortunately, I found an ethical lawyer, Eric Winter, who did an excellent job defending me.
What made me an easy target was my level 1 autism, something I was unaware of my whole life until I finally obtained and accepted a diagnosis last year. Last week I filed a bar complaint against my first attorney on this case, Jeremy Clark, Easton’s City Solicitor, and plan to cooperate with the Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court for justice.
Besides Jane, I would like to thank members of the Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania and friends for their support. Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania Kevin Gaughen Jennifer Moore LPPA Chairwoman Steve Scheetz Rob Pepe Michael Chastain Spike Cohen Larry Frey Daniel Fishman Dan Wassmer Joseph P. Soloski Joseph Van Wagner Lloyd Schafer Jennifer Economides Adams Eric Adams Andrew Hatstat Robert Dandi Matthew Schutter Kyle Burton, Libertarian Terry S. Ellis Svend la Rose Ginny Creyer Joe Pitsko and many many others.”
PA regime – even more corrupt than CA or NY ???
— just following orders from Devil City DNC/RNC to purge 3rd parties ???
He could have avoided all of this hassle if he had just taken me up on my offer to go work in his district if he, or him and whatever other local party members, would just pay for my motel or get me an Airbnb or put me up at somebody home. I did end up going there to gather signatures, but they only were willing to pay for one day of motel. I offered to stay longer, but they just did not want to pay for another day of motel.
He thought he could save some money by hiring a non-libertarian mercenary to gather petition signatures off of Facebook, and this person forged signatures and burned him. They turned in the page with forged signatures and conveniently did not sign the petition circulator declaration on that page, probably because they knew that the signatures were forged and that they were the ones who forged them. Was this person trying to set him up, or were they just trying to scam some easy money? I don’t know. I do know that he made the mistake of signing this declaration himself, which was a foolish thing to have done.
The petitions for minor parties can have multiple candidates on them, and the pages have to be separated by county, so while the statewide candidates at the top of the page will be the same across the state, the candidates for district offices are different depending on which page the county is for. There was a candidate running for US House in this same area whose name was on the same petition pages, named Tim Silfies, and his petition signatures got challenged. Silfies ended up surviving the petition challenge, however, if was during this challenge that the opposition discovered the forged signatures on a sheet turned in by Jake Towne which had his name signed off as the circulator in the petition declaration. This is what led to the criminal charges. It was an honest mistake on Jake’s part, but if I had been there I’d have advised him against doing it. I think it turned out that none of them even really needed any of the signatures on that page to have had enough valid signatures to have qualified for the ballot, so he could have just not submitted that page, but he did not know this at the time.
When I was in his district I specifically asked him if he wanted me to stay another day, which would have entailed, him, and/or the other party members there, paying for another day at a motel for me. He said no. If he or they would have just paid for one more day of a motel for me I could have easily gotten the same number of signatures that were on that page with the forgeries, only NONE of them would have been forged, or otherwise gathered in a fraudulent manner, and the validity rate on them would have been really high.
Moral of the story: Trying to cut corners can end up costing you big time. Instead of hiring random people or mercenaries who don’t really believe in your cause, hire proven petition circulators who actually do believe in your cause.
Real bad idea to sign as circulator, particularly if Pennsylvania requires that signature to be notarized.
The number of supporters should be cut to a small number and instead of signing a petition have them go to the courthouse and be counted.
I sympathize with Jake Townes for the ordeal he went through. Kudos to his wife and the other people who helped him through this experience. Andy gave us some excellent advice in his comments above. I hope other candidates can learn from this so that they will not have the same problems in the future.
This goes to show the corruptness of both the major political parties against having third parties on the ballot.
Pennsylvania doesn’t require notarization of petitions. The notarization was declared unconstitutional in Pennsylania some years ago, in federal court.
Further evidence that all ballot access censorship laws should be abolished. They are designed to suppress and entrap dissidents and deprive voters of freedom to choose.
Signing off as a witness on signatures on a petition or other legal document that you didn’t actually witness being signed is a crime, is it not?
The notary requirement on petitions in Pennsylvania ended in 2016.
There are still petition circulator declarations on petitions in Pennsylvania, but they no longer have to be notarized.
That was clarified earlier by Mr. Winger already. My question stands.
No, it’s not a crime. In the normal course of events, the person in charge of the petition drive will often sign the circulator affidavit. The circulator affidavit doesn’t say that you have to be the circulator, it says that to the best of your knowledge all the signatures were gathered legally. This is standard practice. The Republicrats were just engaging in a fishing expedition.
Are you sure? It may be standard practice, but that could just mean a law not being enforced often, which happens often to a lot of laws. What does the sign off actually say? What is the text of the laws/regulations that create that sign off? What was the intent in passing them? I’m not asking whether you think the sign off should exist, or whether the petition should even be required for that matter. I’m asking about the laws.
Laws are different in different states. So I’m curious what it is there, not just what has become standard practice through custom in practice. If you are correct about the law and not just standard practice, why do they call it a circulator signoff? I would think a document stating that the campaign as a whole is not affirmatively aware that the signatures were gathered fraudulently by its volunteers, employees, or contractors would be called something else? I could be wrong.
Supposing that is indeed the law, how would it ever come to be enforced in practice? I’m not saying or implying whether there should be such a law, or whether it should be enforced or how much.
It is quite telling that the one page which had forged signatures on it was the one page that this non-libertarian mercenary he hired off of Facebook to gather signatures for him, did not sign off on that circulator declaration. This person must have known that those signatures were forged, because they were the ones who forged them. I wonder if any investigation was done to find out if this person was put up to forging signatures, and leaving the circulator declaration blank because they were put up to doing this by somebody, say Republicans or Democrats, because they were trying to set Jake Towne up, or, were they just trying to make a quick buck, with the hope that nobody would noticed that they had turned in that petition sheet without having signed off the declaration, and perhaps without checking the validity of those signatures.
Was it the only page that this person didn’t sign? Was that the only person he hired, or did he hire a bunch of people? How many signatures did he need, and were the margins really so small that he couldn’t feel confident without that one single page?