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James Devine, 62, of Lambertville, initially received a summons last May after state authorities said he filed 1,948 fraudulent petitions with the Secretary of State’s office to get Lisa McCormick on the ballot for the June 2021 primary.
Grand jurors in Trenton, in turn, returned an indictment charging Devine with offenses concerning nomination documents, tampering with public records and falsifying records, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin said on Tuesday, March 19.
Devine -- who had been political director of the New Jersey Democratic Committee in the 1990s -- might be best known for saying members of his party should "go hunting" after then-House Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana was shot in 2017.
Tucker Carlson called him “unbalanced" at the time.
Devine and McCormick had previously been accused of using a bogus logo and letterhead to try conning voters into believing that a Democratic opponent in the state Assembly supported then-President Trump.
The pair were also accused of publishing a bogus racist quote from another primary opponent, among other alleged deception attempts at making it seem that they controlled their party in New Jersey.
The New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission fined a PAC run by Devine $120,000 in 2018 for not disclosing the names of contributors or specific expenses over a five-year period.
McCormick has lost various elections over the past dozen years for both clerk and surrogate in Union County, the Rahway Council, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. Devine has lost his share of elections, as well.
Devine served as McCormick's campaign manager in her toothless bid to challenge Gov. Phil Murphy in their party's primary three years ago.
According to investigators, Devine tried to capitalize on an executive order that allowed candidates in New Jersey during the COVID pandemic to file nominating petitions with electronic signatures.
Devine sloppily tapped into an outdated voter database, then sent the New Jersey Secretary of State’s Division of Elections 1,948 fraudulent voter certifications via email, authorities charged.
At least one voter allegedly was dead, the investigators found. Another had a number in his name ("Jose8"). There was also a petition signed “First Name Middle Name Last Name” -- all evidence of an email merge, they said.
"Every single voter certification used the same fonts and signature style — with not a single voter using an electronic signature that differed from the typed name," Platkin noted.
"In nearly every instance the same number of extra spaces appeared between the city name and 'NJ' in the address line, which the Division of Elections found suspicious and seemed to indicate a computer program had filled out the forms in an identical manner," the attorney general added.
The New Jersey Democratic State Committee challenged Devine's methods, citing various issues with the voter certifications that he provided and raising questions about their authenticity.
An administrative law judge sided with the committee and bounced McCormick from the ballot in April 2021 after several voters whose names appeared on the petitions testified that they'd never signed anything.
Next came a criminal investigation.
“Our democracy is reliant on fair elections in which voters can have full confidence," Platkin said. “The public should have faith in the legitimacy of the electoral process. When fraud is committed and when election records are tampered with, law enforcement takes such crimes seriously, investigates them thoroughly, and ensures that perpetrators face justice.”
The case is being prosecuted by Deputy Attorney General Max Lesser and Corruption Bureau Deputy Chief Andrew Wellbrock.
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