A bounty for vote fraud

Signs offering a $1,000 reward for information on provable voter fraud cases have popped up in center city and West Philadelphia today, giving informants until midnight to drop a dime on the evil-doers.

The campaign is the work of an organization formed last year called the Pennsylvania Commercial Action Network, which goes by the acronym PACAN (pronounced “Pa can”). It’s one of those non-profit, issue-advocacy groups that produces political messages and doesn’t reveal the identity of its donors.

When I reached out to PACAN, the guy who returned my call was Matt Balazik, who it turns out I’ve spoken to before. I wrote about Balazik in April, when he formed a super PAC called “A Super PAC,” – I’m not making this up – to be available for political activity worth pursuing.

Balazik told me today that PACAN had ordered several hundred of the vote fraud bounty signs and distributed them to groups he’d rather not name, to protect them from reprisal.

“Our benefactors have read the news reports and claims that there isn’t any significant voter fraud, but that there are convictions every time there’s an election,” Balazik said. “Their feeling is that it’s something that’s not being reported.”

“We know it’s difficult to come forward and report things, and we thought it would be nice to encourage folks to come forward and do something responsible,” Balazik said.

He said calls to the number on the signs have been coming in from Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley, and we won’t know until after the election what fraud is reported.