Wingard admits failing to report felony

T.A. Barnhart

Rep Matt Wingard has provided plenty of blogging fodder here at BlueOregon. Today, during a hearing of the House Rules Committee on which he sits, he copped to knowing about felonies — and not reporting them.

Wingard has been caught plagiarizing on the House floor, using campaign finances for personal purposes and hitting his son in the head with a screwdriver (misdemeanor assault). Through all these misadventures, he’s never hesitated to attack those bringing the charges and to make up his own facts. But his own big mouth is the petard by which he has been hoisted. The audio follows — available from the Legislature’s website — but the key statement is: “People close to me have done that.”

“That” is completing a vote-by-mail ballot that another person has signed. “That” is a felony, and Wingard has witnessed the felony and, from the evidence reported, not done a thing about it.

Here is the audio. A transcription is at end of the story. (Warning: it may not play in Safari. It does in Chrome/Firefox.)

Matt Wingard, just a few weeks ago, swore to uphold the Constitution of the State of Oregon. He swore to “faithfully discharge the duties” of his office. Not reporting a felony is a crime for any citizen; for someone holding an elected office, it’s a double-dip of dereliction. It’s possible that the crime or crimes (Wingard’s statement indicates multiple offenses) occurred before he took office. There were several elections using vote-by-mail prior to that time. But if these felonies were perpetrated after Wingard took office and he did not report them, he has committed both a crime himself and a violation of legislative ethics.

And given the way Wingard attacks the county clerks and their support of vote-by-mail, you would think he would be the first to turn in someone abusing the system. At the very least, you know he wants to prove what a corrupt system it is.

Listen to the entirety of Wingard’s questioning (it’s about 10 minutes long and starts about the 40-minute mark, and you’ll see he has one goal: demonstrate that vote-by-mail is not merely susceptible to fraud but would probably be proven to be riddled with criminality if the county clerks would but check into it. His suggestion for finding out?

County clerks, suggest Wingard, should conduct “random, scientific” audits of voters — and yes, he does mean go knock on doors to verify identity and nationality. (For a guy who has no trouble attacking the proven science of climate change, his promotion of the science of statistics seems comic — or malevolent.) And once the county clerk offices were conducting door-to-door checks on voters in such a manner, who would be among the first to condemn the intimidation tactics of the clerks?

Sigh.

Anyway, this merits an ethics complaint. It would be better to come from someone in his district but they keep returning him to Salem, so I’m not holding my breath that his admission to committing a felony will matter to them anymore than did his confession to hitting his child.

But he’s either a criminal who is willing cover-up felonies he believe are undermining Oregon’s democracy, or he’s a liar. He needs to tell his colleagues which.

To get to the audio archive: Go to the Legislature's Audio/Video web page and click the following links:

• “2011 Session” (under “Audio Archives” in middle of page)
• “Archives of Committee Meetings from the 2011 Session”
• “Rules” (down the page, under House Committees)
• 02/16/2011 - it will require Real Player.

Unidentified county clerk: In the years I’ve been involved in Oregon elections … the number of fraudulent claims made by any family member, even in a divorce: I’m not aware of even one time. And divorces are not always nice. That is a felonious offence, and I imagine it would be raised at some time. Regardless of the system, including the polling place system where people have been paid to come and sign a poll book [example of father & son who worked their way up through the state to prove that the polling system could not stop anyone who wanted to break election laws] … Hopefully we still live in a society where the presumption is people are telling the truth, they are telling the truth, and those who don’t will make a mistake and will be found and prosecuted.

Wingard: Just to be clear on that, that practice is not that uncommon in this state. I’ve actually read letters to the editor in which somebody has bragged they are doing that for their entire family. People close to me have done that. My own anecdotal evidence is this is not a rare occurence. in our vote by mail system. (emphasis added)

By T.A. Barnhart Feb. 16, 2011