Pennsylvania Attorney General Michelle Henry announced Wednesday that her office had filed dozens of charges involving alleged election-petition forgery against Kirk Rice, who gathered hundreds of signatures in 2022 for Democratic Congressional candidate Steve Irwin.
Rice faces a total of 75 counts, including 33 counts each of forgery and identity, in a case that Henry, in a statement, called “a reminder that interfering with Pennsylvania’s election process is a very serious matter.”
Henry’s office says that Rice gathered 437 signatures on petitions in all, but “many appeared to be forged or falsified.” They included cases in which voters told investigators they had not signed the petitions, and some in which the voters lived out of state.
Indeed, as WESA was the first to report in March 2022, several voters listed on those petitions told WESA they had not signed them. They included a federal judge, Cathy Bissoon, who at the time called the situation “an unfortunate scenario” for those involved.
Rice could not be reached for comment Wednesday. The Irwin campaign is not identified by name in the release, presumably because the campaign itself is among the alleged victims. One of the charges facing Rice is theft by deception, and federal election records show that Irwin’s campaign paid Rice $1,340 for canvassing.
Marco Attisano, who was an attorney for the Irwin campaign at the time, noted that it “had more than enough signatures to qualify for the ballot without a single signature from Kirk Rice, and the campaign … cooperated fully with this investigation. Just like anyone else who has been victimized, we want to see this person held accountable.”
Questions about the authenticity of petition signatures are common in hotly contested races, and challenging the petitions of electoral opponents in court is a common practice. But actual criminal prosecutions are exceedingly rare.
Election attorney Chuck Pascal, who represented Irwin’s chief rival in the Democratic primary, Summer Lee, was among those who threw a flag on the signatures in 2022. But on Wednesday, he said he could not recall a case where charges ensued.
“I know of several cases where charges have been threatened, but the candidates [typically] withdraw and the investigations were seemingly dropped,” he said. “I’ve certainly never seen this many charges on anything like this.
“Wow. Just wow,” he added.
Pascal and other election attorneys who spoke to WESA surmised that the fact that the alleged fraud touched on a federal judge may have raised the profile of the case.
Henry’s statement did not address that, though it said, “At the foundation of our democracy are free and fair elections, and this defendant is charged with undermining that essential process.”
Ultimately, Irwin remained on the ballot but lost to Lee, who now represents the 12th District.
