Nearly a year after Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick set a bounty of up to $1 million to anyone who could find instances of voter fraud in the November 2020 election, he has handed out his first reward.
The minimum payout of $25,000 was handed over to a progressive poll worker in Pennsylvania who turned in a registered Republican who voted twice, the member-only Dallas Morning News reported.
Tipster Eric Frank said he would have turned in anyone he saw voting illegally regardless of party, but noted the irony of his find.
"It’s my belief that they were trying to get cases of Democrats doing voter fraud. And that just wasn’t the case," Frank told the news outlet. "This kind of blew up in their face."
A week after the 2020 election, as former President Donald Trump refused to concede, Patrick announced the million-dollar reward, noting any information that resulted in a conviction would get the minimum of $25,000.
"Trust me, there are mistakes that have been made," Patrick said on Fox 26 in Houston in mid-November 2020. "The Democrats in Milwaukee and Detroit and Philadelphia and Atlanta brought this on themselves."
Within weeks, 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 Dallas Morning News reported.
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, the news outlet reported.
Frank said he plans to save the cash reward for a future home purchase, though he may donate some of it to charity.
Fran Beyer ✉
Fran Beyer is a writer with Newsmax and covers national politics.
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