Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has paid his first voter fraud bounty. It went to an unexpected recipient

AUSTIN — Nearly a year after offering up a hefty bounty for evidence of voter fraud in the wake of Donald Trump’s loss, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has handed out his first reward.

But instead of going to an informant who smoked out fraud by Democrats, Patrick’s five-figure payout went to a progressive poll worker in Pennsylvania whose tip led to a single conviction of illegal voting by a registered Republican.

The unexpected outcome reveals the political dangers of cash bounties. With few strings attached, and more cases of alleged GOP voting fraud still in Pennsylvania courts, Patrick may be asked to shell out even more cash to his opponents.

This case also undercuts unsubstantiated GOP concerns that widespread voter fraud helped hand the White House to Joe Biden, political experts said. In Pennsylvania, a state that was central in Trump’s attempts to overthrow the election, around five cases of voter fraud from last year’s election have been prosecuted, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer — four involved Republicans.

In an interview with The Dallas Morning News, tipster Eric Frank said he would have turned in anyone he saw voting illegally regardless of party. But as the scion of a family of Democratic operatives, he also acknowledged the irony of the situation.

This week, Frank deposited $25,000 of Patrick’s campaign cash into his bank account.

“It’s my belief that they were trying to get cases of Democrats doing voter fraud. And that just wasn’t the case,” Frank said. “This kind of blew up in their face.”

Patrick’s spokesman Allen Blakemore declined to comment.

A week after the 2020 election, as Donald Trump continued to refuse to accept the results, Patrick announced that he had set aside $1 million for tipsters who turned over evidence of voter fraud. Anyone whose information resulted in a conviction, he said in a press release, would get a minimum of $25,000.

The reward offer went viral, thrusting Patrick and Texas into the national spotlight as one of the top supporters of Trump as the former president continues to insist he was the rightful winner of the election. While he bolstered Trump’s unsubstantiated story, Patrick blamed Democrats for casting doubt on the election results by not passing more restrictive voting laws.

“Trust me, there are mistakes that have been made,”Patrick, a staunch Republican and Trump surrogate in Texas, said on Fox 26 Houston in mid-November 2020. “The Democrats in Milwaukee and Detroit and Philadelphia and Atlanta brought this on themselves.”

Within weeks, however, a handful of cases of alleged illegal voting had popped up in Pennsylvania. Most involved voters, at least three Republicans and one Democrat, casting or attempting to cast ballots for dead relatives.

The fifth involved Ralph Thurman, a 72-year-old Republican who Frank turned in after seeing him vote twice on Election Day, once for himself and once for his son, who was a registered Democrat.

As early as December, the flurry of allegations prompted Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat, to call on Patrick to surrender the million dollars to him. The two sparred on social media and in the press, with Patrick accusing Fetterman of not taking the issue seriously — and Fetterman selling t-shirts to make light of it all.

But Patrick would not hand over the cash.

Blakemore, his campaign spokesman, told The News in January that only original tipsters whose information helped lead to a final conviction for fraudulent voting were eligible for the rewards — not politicians like Fetterman.

At the time, Frank doubted Patrick would pay up.

“People go on social media and say stuff all the time,” he said.

Then last month, Thurman pleaded guilty to repeat voting. He was sentenced to three years probation and barred from voting for four years, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. Frank believed he was now eligible for the cash reward and he wanted to seek it.

But he didn’t know how.

Patrick’s press release announcing the voter fraud reward did not have any other details about how to claim the prize, raising questions about why he publicly issued the bounty but no information about how to collect it.

When The News asked about the procedure to collect earlier this month, Blakemore said tipsters could apply directly to him. So Frank did.

After Frank provided some documentation, the Patrick campaign sent him a check for $25,000. It was a lot for Frank but a drop in the bucket for No. 2 Republican in Texas, whose campaign coffers are flush with more than $23 million. Ethics expert Andrew Cates said the reward is allowed under Texas law, which restricts personal use of campaign funds — but only by the candidates themselves.

“It’s not prohibited,” Cates said.

Frank said Blakemore told him he had been the first and only person to seek the prize but that he didn’t receive more because higher dollar rewards were reserved for “bigger fish.”

“Was he looking for a celebrity or a political group as a whole?” Frank said. “I don’t know what he meant by bigger fish.”

Blakemore declined to comment on his conversations with Frank, saying it would be inappropriate to discuss conversations with a private citizen.

Frank, whose father is an election judge and mother a campaign manager for Pennsylvania Democrats, said Patrick probably doesn’t love the idea that he just put $25,000 into his pocket. As a poll worker, Frank still worries about voter fraud now that he’s seen it in action but says the attention on Democrats is misplaced.

“[Republicans] need to look within their party and not focus so closely on fraud on the Democratic side,” he said.

Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, said this case underlines what we already know about voter fraud: It occurs but in small numbers that don’t have an effect on election outcomes. Patrick probably hoped to uncover widespread fraud among Democrats, Jones added, and one-off convictions of Trump supporters don’t fit that narrative.

“As long as he doesn’t have to make too many more payouts, he’ll probably say, ‘the positive public exposure I received is worth the $25,000 I paid,’” Jones said. But Patrick’s bounty could be a cautionary tale for other politicians: “Be careful what you wish for.”

Thurman’s lawyer, meanwhile, said his client’s double vote was just a big mistake. His client is hard of hearing and thought the masked poll worker said he could vote for his son, Jeff Oster said.

“Had this not been an exceptionally contentious election year in the middle of a global pandemic, none of this would have occurred,” Oster told The News. “It is certainly disingenuous for anyone – including Eric Frank himself – to think that he should be rewarded for his actions on Election Day.”

Frank maintains Thurman knew exactly what he was doing when he cast a second ballot. As for the reward, Frank plans to save the cash so he and his fiancée can buy a house. Some small amount could go to political or philanthropic causes, like animal welfare.

For helping him build his future, Frank had a message for his unlikely patron.

“Thank you for putting out the bounty,” he said to Patrick. “I’m glad that you and your team honored your words.”

*** This article has been archived for your research. The original version from The Dallas Morning News can be found here ***