MADISON COUNTY, Ind. — A former Republican candidate running for an Indiana seat in the U.S. House of Representatives has been arrested and charged with stealing several election ballots during a recent voting machine test.
Larry L. Savage Jr., a candidate in the Republican 5th District primary held earlier this year, was arrested Tuesday morning by Madison County authorities and charged with destroying/misplacing a ballot and theft. He has since been released on a $500 cash bond.
The charges filed against Savage, a 51-year-old Anderson resident and precinct committeeman, stem from an incident on Oct. 3 in which two election ballots went missing at the Madison County Government Center during testing of the local voting machines.
Court documents show county officials began testing voting machines at 10 a.m. on Oct. 3, an event open to the public. Several citizens attended the tests and were allowed to run “test” ballots through the machines assigned to their county.
Despite being marked “test,” the ballots were still officially tracked and counted by the State and included real candidate names as well as differing votes. After testing, officials found one straight-Republican ballot and one write-in ballot were missing.
A review of security footage, which was subsequently being live-streamed online, showed Savage handling the two missing ballots. He can also be heard confirming with an election official that these are “absolutely, totally real ballots.”
In the video Savage can be seen looking around the room before folding up two ballots and putting them in his sweatshirt pocket.
He could have kept them as personal souvenirs for what may go down as a pretty historical event.
Or he could plan to plant them somewhere as evidence of tampering.
“The votes on them are statistically meaningless” is incorrect though; I just went through an election where the two sides in one district differed by 27 votes.
The article explains he stole the 2 ballots on purpose to throw off a certification process that Indiana’s voting machines go through that’s open to the public.
The machines ran through 136 test ballots, then he stole 2 and left. He leaned over and is heard on video saying “fucked up count” to a women he was coordinating with, who then raised the issue of “missing ballots” to the officials, all while live streaming to facebook.
This guy, who then shows the stolen ballots to another guy outside who laughed and patted him on the back, then joined the live stream and said “they are missing ballots! Don’t trust anything!”
Cops reviewed video footage, then got a warrent. He claimed intially that he had been allowed go take them by officials. When they proved that wasent true, he claimed he took them as souvenirs, even though they were explicitly marked as official documents. Text messages that the suspect sent also make it clear he knew they were official ballots.
The sad truth is that the Trumpettes are going to see “man stole republican ballot”, stop reading further, and raise their burning
crossespitchforks.What a wonderful time to be alive…