About That Recount

Jill Stein is not off her rocker with pushing for recounts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and, today, in Michigan. Here is one of the prime reasons:

It took less than an hour Wednesday for a jury to convict political activist Brandon Michael Hall on 10 counts of election law fraud, following a day-and-a-half trial in Ottawa County Circuit Court.

The 27-year-old Grand Haven resident, author of the West Michigan Politics blog and self-admitted political junkie, said the verdict wasn’t a surprise. Hall said that he had resigned himself to that possibility after the Michigan Supreme Court, during this past summer, determined his case should be tried as a felony. [..]

Hall was charged with election law fraud after forging signatures on petitions in a 2012 effort to get judicial candidate Chris Houghtaling (R) on the ballot.

Local courts initially agreed with Hall’s position that the case should be tried as a misdemeanor, based on a statement printed on the petitions, but the Attorney General’s Office appealed the case through the court system until the Michigan Supreme Court made the decision. That’s why it took so long for the case to come to trial. [..]

Hall has stayed busy the past few years working on various political campaigns across the country and most recently ran for the state House 89th District seat, but he was defeated in the Republican primary in August. He also worked on President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign.

“Donald Trump has made claim after claim calling the integrity of the election into question, but his Michigan campaign had no problem hiring a staff member facing election law charges,” Lonnie Scott, executive director of Progress Michigan, said following Hall’s conviction on Wednesday. “The fact that the Trump campaign and the Michigan Republican Party embraced Brandon Hall is just one more reason to recount and audit the vote in Michigan.”

Hall’s sentencing is scheduled for 1 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 27. He faces up to five years in prison.

We got problems and not just in River City.