Political activist sentenced after filing fraudulent election petitions

A longtime New Jersey political operative was sentenced Friday to two years of probation and fines after pleading guilty in August to illegally trying to place a gubernatorial candidate on the 2021 election ballot, according to court records.

The sentence handed down by Superior Court Judge Robert Lytle of Mercer County was comparable to the one prosecutors recommended for James Devine, 62, of Lambertville, after he agreed to plead guilty in late August.

Devine was indicted by a grand jury on March 12 for falsifying public records or information, misdemeanors involving certificates of appointment or petitions, and falsifying or falsifying documents after authorities accused him of forging signatures on a 2021 gubernatorial primary petition for his life. partner, Lisa A. McCormick.

“What happened was I got people to commit to signing and I made a mistake transposing the names onto the ballot,” Devine said in a call telephone call on Friday. “It was a stupid, stupid mistake. And I have always admitted it since the beginning of the investigation.

Devine, who was McCormick’s campaign manager at the time, was accused by prosecutors of filing a fraudulent 1,948-name petition with the state Division of Elections in support of McCormick’s run for office Democratic primaries for governor, according to the complaint filed in April 2021.

The New Jersey Democratic State Committee filed a written challenge to the petition submitted by Devine just days after he filed it with the state election board, the complaint states.

The challenge cited numerous problems with voter certifications and a hearing was held on April 12, the complaint details. The next day, a decision was issued by Administrative Law Judge Jeffrey N. Rabin to remove McCormick from the primary ballot, according to the complaint.

The Attorney General’s Office of Public Integrity investigated the fraudulent petitions and conducted several interviews with people whose names appeared on the petitions but said they never signed or authorized their names to be included on petitions, the complaint states.

Officials also said during the 2021 administrative hearing that at least one of the people on the list died earlier that year and that one page of the petition includes the signatures of “first name, middle name, surname “.

Devine admitted to investigators multiple times during the investigation that he included false voter information, according to the complaint, and Devine released a statement after the indictment was publicly announced that he had committed a “careless error”.

“I made a careless mistake for which I take full responsibility and I am sorry for my mistake,” Devine said in a statement posted on Twitter. “I don’t know how this happened, but my mistake resulted in the wrong listing being submitted.”

Devine said Friday that he has worked in politics since 1981 and has collected signatures for petitions for dozens of candidates, but that in 2021 the state allowed the use of digital signatures on petitions as the pandemic of COVID-19 continued.

“It was embarrassing because I do this and I’m pretty good at it,” Devine said Friday. “I submitted a petition with errors and the candidate was not placed on the ballot. No harm. No fault.

McCormick was a perennial candidate for public office after running for Congress, state legislature, U.S. Senate and governor in previous elections, but she shocked the political establishment in 2018 when she obtained 38% of the vote in a primary challenge to former Senator Robert Menendez.

Devine spent years in New Jersey and national politics. He was embroiled in a major controversy in 2017 when four people, including Republican Rep. Steve Scalise, were nearly killed by a gunman while practicing for a congressional softball game.

While Scalise was recovering from serious injuries, Devine used the hashtag #HuntRepublicans in a social media post. He later stated that he was not advocating violence but was using the phrase as a metaphor.