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MADISON COUNTY, Ind. — A former Republican candidate running for an Indiana seat in the U.S. House of Representatives has been arrested and charged with stealing several election ballots during a recent voting machine test.

Larry L. Savage Jr., a candidate in the Republican 5th District primary held earlier this year, was arrested Tuesday morning by Madison County authorities and charged with destroying/misplacing a ballot and theft. He has since been released on a $500 cash bond.

The charges filed against Savage, a 51-year-old Anderson resident and precinct committeeman, stem from an incident on Oct. 3 in which two election ballots went missing at the Madison County Government Center during testing of the local voting machines.

Court documents show county officials began testing voting machines at 10 a.m. on Oct. 3, an event open to the public. Several citizens attended the tests and were allowed to run “test” ballots through the machines assigned to their county.

Despite being marked “test,” the ballots were still officially tracked and counted by the State and included real candidate names as well as differing votes. After testing, officials found one straight-Republican ballot and one write-in ballot were missing.

A review of security footage, which was subsequently being live-streamed online, showed Savage handling the two missing ballots. He can also be heard confirming with an election official that these are “absolutely, totally real ballots.”

In the video Savage can be seen looking around the room before folding up two ballots and putting them in his sweatshirt pocket.

  • sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip
    46·
    9 hours ago

    He was at a test run of the voting process/machines.

    He pocketed two of the ballots… then the count and verification process began.

    He then started whispering to people “fucked up count”, started posting on social media that the machines were faulty, went outside, showed some other guy the two ballots he stole, and got a pat on the back from him.

    A review of security footage, which was subsequently being live-streamed online, showed Savage handling the two missing ballots. He can also be heard confirming with an election official that these are “absolutely, totally real ballots.”

    In the video Savage can be seen looking around the room before folding up two ballots and putting them in his sweatshirt pocket.

    After this, Savage is seen leaning over to a woman in attendance and saying “f***ed up count.” Less than 10 minutes later, Savage is seen leaving the building and showing a man the ballots in his pocket. The man then pats Savage on the back and Savage gets into his car and leaves.

    … He very, very obviously did this to attempt to propagate a notion that the election is going to be rigged.

    Also one could reasonably expect that as of yet unidentified pat-on-the-back man would also be a person of interest, as he may have directed Savage to actually do what he did.

    Conspiracy to tamper with the voting process is… hopefully also a crime.