Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin and the Office of Public Integrity and Accountability (OPIA) today announced the sentencing of a campaign manager from Hunterdon County for attempting to fraudulently place a candidate on the Democratic primary ballot in the New Jersey governor’s race in 2021.
In accordance with a negotiated plea agreement with OPIA, James Devine, 62, of Lambertville, New Jersey, was sentenced to two years of probation on October 18, 2024 by Judge Robert E. Lytle in Superior Court, Mercer County. Devine pled guilty to a third-degree crime concerning nomination certificates or petitions before Judge Lytle on August 26, 2024.
“Rather than knocking on doors and making a good faith effort to convince voters to support his candidate, the defendant misused voters’ information without authorization, in order to deceive the State into believing his candidate met the bare minimum of requirements to be on the ballot,” said Attorney General Platkin. “Cheating in a race for elected office is illegal and undemocratic, and there are consequences for it.”
“Criminal activity that threatens peoples’ faith in the fairness and legitimacy of our elections is unacceptable,” said Drew Skinner, Executive Director of the Office of Public Integrity and Accountability. “This case should send a message that election fraud will be detected and offenders will be held accountable.”
Following an OPIA investigation, a State grand jury in Trenton returned an indictment on March 12, 2024, charging Devine with various crimes stemming from his April 2021 attempt to fraudulently place the candidate on the ballot in the June 8, 2021 Democratic gubernatorial primary.
According to publicly filed documents and statements in open court, the investigation revealed that Devine submitted 1,948 fraudulent nominating petitions to the New Jersey Department of State’s Division of Elections, in an attempt to enable his candidate to compete in the primary.
The New Jersey Democratic State Committee lodged a formal legal challenge to Devine’s effort on April 9, 2021, enumerating issues with the petitions he had provided. The committee alleged there were questions about those petitions’ authenticity.
Citing the irregularities, Administrative Law Judge Jeffrey N. Rabin sided with the committee on April 13, 2021, striking the candidate from the ballot.
During the investigation, individuals whose names appeared on the petitions submitted by Devine provided information that they had neither submitted a petition nor authorized one in support of the candidate’s nomination. The investigation revealed Devine had uploaded false voter information onto petition forms and submitted them to the Division of Elections on behalf of the campaign without the voters’ approval.
In pleading guilty, the defendant acknowledged that he knew the petitions were falsely made when he filed them.
The case was handled for the OPIA Corruption Bureau by Assistant Attorney General Andrew Wellbrock, under the supervision of Bureau Chief Jeff Manis and OPIA Executive Director Skinner.
Defense counsel:
Melissa Karabulut, of the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender
Original source can be found here.