A politician is expressing dismay over a petition circulator convicted of voter fraud who is allegedly allowed to gather signatures in Arkansas to qualify ballot initiatives.
"I am appalled that someone convicted of voter fraud like Mark Jacoby is being allowed to operate in Arkansas,” said Arkansas State Rep. Joe Cloud. “The integrity of our elections is far too critical to let someone with a criminal record like Jacoby into such an integral part of the initiative process. I encourage any voter to refuse to sign a Jacoby-backed petition and I encourage lawmakers to prohibit people with felony voter fraud convictions from circulating petitions in Arkansas.”
As previously reported, Mark Anthony Jacoby, who’d worked for Arno Political Consultants in 2005 was arrested for voter fraud in California in 2008, according to media reports, and later pleaded guilty.
“Every now and again, when Mark is involved in a campaign with my company or with other companies, it gets brought up,” said Michael Arno, founder of Arno Political Consultants. “It just got brought up about a year ago in Ohio.”
Arno says he remembers the incident involving Mark Jacoby vividly because his deceased brother had been wrongly implicated.
“It was a voter registration drive that was sponsored by the Republican party and it was the deputy director of the San Bernardino County Democratic party who called up a newspaper and said they had complaints from Democrats that they had been registered against their will as Republicans, which wasn't the case,” Arno told Legal Newsline. “It was alleged that my dead brother was the person who was leading the voter registration drive and Mark Jacoby’s name was involved because we had hired Mark in the past as had everybody else. But my company wasn't involved in that registration drive and my brother had passed away years before.”
Arno said he sent in a copy of his brother’s obituary and the San Bernadino newspaper withdrew the article.
“The fact was that Mark Jacoby was working on behalf of another company not mine and it was all part of a set up where the people who were ‘complaining,’ the Democratic party, were just part of the setup on it,” said Arno. “It was because they didn't have evidence that there was anybody being registered against their will that they went after Mark Jacoby for another reason.”
Although Rep. Cloud told Legal Newsline he doesn’t know for sure whether Jacoby is working on any current petitions in Arkansas, he does believe Jacoby should never have been allowed near elections in Arkansas.
"Our elections are only as secure as the weakest link, and right now that weakest link was arrested in California for falsifying his identification and lying to the state—not to mention his delinquent status on hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes,” Rep. Cloud said. “We need to ensure he never gets close again."