A Republican official in Georgia who promoted the debunked conspiracy theory that the 2020 presidential election was stolen was found to have voted illegally multiple times.
Brian K. Pritchard, the Georgia Republican Party’s first vice chairman, violated state election laws when he voted nine times while serving probation for a felony check forgery sentence, according to a ruling by Administrative Law Judge Lisa Boggs, first reported by the Atlanta-Journal Constitution.
Pritchard has been ordered to pay a $5,000 fine and receive a public reprimand.
Pritchard, a conservative radio host, has promoted the false claim that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election that cost Donald Trump a second term.
His felony check forgery charge stemmed from a 1996 arrest in Pennsylvania. He was sentenced to three years probation which has been extended thrice, in 1999 after he moved to Georgia, in 2002 and 2004, according to the Washington Post.
His probation was extended by seven years in 2004. This means Pritchard was unable to vote in Georgia where felons are barred from casting a ballot until they’ve completed their sentences, which in Pritchard’s case would be 2011.
Despite this, Pritchard filled out a voter registration form in 2008 and voted 9 times in special, primary, general and a presidential election before his probation was over.
Pritchard said he didn’t do anything wrong and thought he had completed his probation before voting in Georgia. But the judge was not convinced.
“The court does not find the respondent’s explanations credible or convincing,” Boggs wrote. “At the very least, even if the court accepts he did not know about his felony sentences, the record before this court demonstrates that he should have known.”
