4 of ex-Rep. McCotter's staff charged

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DETROIT, Aug. 9 (UPI) -- Four members of former U.S. Rep. Thaddeus McCotter's staff were charged Thursday with submitting hundreds of fake signatures on election petitions.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, announcing the charges at a Detroit news conference, said the fakery was so amateurish it "would make an elementary art teacher cringe," the Detroit Free Press reported.

"Evidence developed during the investigation clearly demonstrates that fraudulent petitions were submitted for the 2012 election cycle," an investigators' report said. "But perhaps even more disturbing is the fact that evidence indicates similar fraudulent petition schemes were used in prior elections."

McCotter, a conservative Republican who briefly ran for president last year, resigned from Congress in July. He had represented the 11th district in Detroit's northwestern suburbs since 2003.

He has not been charged.

The defendants include Don Yowchuang, deputy director of McCotter's staff; Paul Seewald, district director; Mary Melissa Turnbull, district representative, and Lorianne O'Brady, scheduler. Yowchuang, 33, of Farmington Hills faces the most serious charges, including 10 counts of election year forgery.

Yowchuang submitted 136 petitions on May 15, 2012, that appeared to have 1,830 signatures, far more than the 1,000 needed to get McCotter on the ballot for the Aug. 7 primary. But investigators say only 244 signatures were legitimate.

Investigators say the staffers submitted false and duplicate petitions and cut and pasted signatures from petitions in previous elections to ones for 2012.