Meet John Fetterman (if you haven’t already), Lt. Governor of Pennsylvania and America’s foremost Dan Patrick troll.
John Fetterman
All John Fetterman wants for Christmas is the $3 million he says Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick owes him.
The Democratic lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania has been trolling his Republican counterpart for weeks to collect on the $1 million Patrick offered in November for evidence of fraud in the Nov. 3 election. Three supporters of President Donald Trump have now been charged in separate voter fraud schemes in Pennsylvania. Fetterman says they should all count for bounty purposes.
The most recent charges came this week — against the second Pennsylvania man to be accused of casting a ballot for Trump in the name of his deceased mother.
“We hit the jackpot with this last one,” Fetterman said. “There are three documented cases — three.”
“All I want for Christmas is my handsome reward from Dan Patrick,” Fetterman tweeted on Dec. 18 with a Christmas tree and pleading face emoji. Fetterman says he’ll donate the proceeds to food banks in the form of gift cards to Sheetz and Wawa, competing Pennsylvania convenience stores with die-hard followings.
Patrick has responded to Fetterman just once, in a tweet in November that read: “Faith in the electoral process is a serious issue. Transparency is critical. PA Dems brought this on themselves w/ last minute changes to election laws and counting ballots behind closed doors. Respond to the reports. Answer the questions. Stop the snide put-downs and #getserious”
Fetterman says he is serious — about debunking the false allegations being thrown at his state. He has taken the lead in Pennsylvania pushing back on bogus claims of voter fraud circulated by Trump and his allies. Patrick — honorary chairman of Trump’s campaign in Texas — and his million-dollar reward are helping to disprove those claims, Fetterman says.
“While it’s undoubtedly and undeniably hilarious these cases involved Trump voters and their dead mothers, it’s irrelevant because it documents how truly rare voter fraud is and how impossible it is to truly pull it off,” Fetterman said.
Fetterman has spent the last six weeks hounding Patrick, who he says is “just such a Trump simp, it’s just pathetic.”
“The thing that’s so especially galling is that people like him were smearing our state when we actually had an impeccable election,” Fetterman said. “They keep trying to malign and smear the quality work done by both sides — we’ve got way more Republican counties than Democratic counties. He’s smearing Republicans and Democrats alike when he impugns the electoral integrity.”
“If you’re going to smear my state, then you need to pay up, because we delivered what you asked for,” he said.
I trust you recall the Dan Patrick “one million dollars for voter fraud” challenge. Of course it was a ridiculous stunt by a shameless publicity whore – anyone else remember the time then-Sen. Dan Patrick, in his first term, brought a million dollars in actual cash to a press conference he’d called because he wanted to make sure everyone understood how much money that was? – and I doubt he gave it much thought beyond approving the media release, but I suspect Fetterman’s response caught him flat-footed. The prune-faced responses from Patrick and his press secretary would suggest they had no planned answer for anyone who took his “challenge” seriously. As such, he’s been thoroughly owned by someone who played the game at a much higher level than he did.
The great irony of this is that the relentless efforts by clowns like Patrick and Ken Paxton – and Greg Abbott before Paxton – to find and prove “voter fraud” on anything grander than a “dude who tried to cast a ballot for his dead mother” level is the best proof anyone could offer of the lack of same. I call this a “Bigfoot hunt” because the parallel is so clear – after decades of Bigfoot hunter tromping around the woods and forests without a single bone, footprint, pelt, or piece of scat to offer as proof of existence, what reasonable person could conclude anything other than there ain’t no such thing? We have literally tons of evidence of creatures that lived hundreds of millions of years ago, but not even one lousy sample of Bigfoot DNA. We have millions of dedicated “voter fraud” hunters, and they can’t come up with anything better than the Fetterman-supplied dude in Forty Fort impersonating his dead mother. You tell me what it means.
too awesome. even in his official portrait you can tell he is a take-no-sh*t sort of dude.
A SCHOLARLY VIEW OF THE PATRICK-BOUNTY MATTER
Does Voter Fraud Pay? Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s $1 Million Voter Fraud Offer
Posted: 30 Dec 2020
By Michael Conklin
Powell Endowed Professor of Business Law, Angelo State University.
Abstract
On November 10, 2020, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick put out a press release stating, in relevant part, “[S]tarting today [I] will pay up to $1 million to incentivize, encourage and reward people to come forward and report voter fraud. . . . Anyone who provides information that leads to an arrest and final conviction of voter fraud will be paid a minimum of $25,000.” This concise Article analyzes whether Patrick’s statement constitutes an offer that contractually obligates him to pay in the event someone accepts by completing the requested action. Additionally, the potential existence of a campaign finance violation is considered.
While this Article addresses only legal considerations, Patrick is advised to also consider the ethical considerations of his behavior.
Keywords: Election Law, Contract Law, Rewards, Offer, Acceptance, Campaign Finance, Dan Patrick, Election Fraud, Substantial Performance
Suggested Citation:
Conklin, Michael, Does Voter Fraud Pay? Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s $1 Million Voter Fraud Offer (December 1, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3740653
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