Georgia news site owner accused of voting illegally

The Georgia Election Board has accused Brian Keith Pritchard, 56, of Cherry Log, of voting while serving a felony sentence.

Pritchard’s case was one of 35 sent by the board on Feb. 10 to the state attorney general or local district attorneys for prosecution, according to a release from Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. A week later, the board referred 24 more cases for prosecution.

Pritchard’s Linkedin profile identifies him as the owner of Fetch Your News.

A spokesman for Raffensperger’s office said Pritchard moved to Georgia in 2008 and registered to vote in Gilmer County. Between registering and 2014, he voted in 14 elections.

When the Gilmer County Election Board learned of his felony probation sentence from a case in Pennsylvania, his name was removed from the voter rolls. The spokesman said at the time that the district attorney deferred action on the case until the state election board took action. Pritchard’s case was opened before the election board in May 2016.

Appalachian Judicial Circuit District Attorney B. Alison Sosebee said she has not received any information from the attorney general in regard to the case. In fact, she learned of the election board decision through the secretary of state’s release.

Court records from Allegheny County, Penn., show Pritchard pled guilty to a trio of charges in May 1996. Those charges included two counts of Forgery-After Writing and one charge of Theft By Failure to Make Required Disposition Funds.

The court records show Pritchard was ordered to pay $33,340 in restitution and $289.64 in court costs. He received probation under a migrated sentence. In June 2011, a bench warrant for failure to appear was issued for Pritchard, which was lifted and closed the next month.

“Election fraud is not tolerated in Georgia. When there is evidence of it, the people responsible face prosecution,” Raffensperger said in a statement. “Georgia has multiple safeguards in place that allow our team of investigators to discover fraudulent voting. They worked to catch the wrongdoing in these cases and they maintain the security of Georgia elections.”

Among the cases bound over for prosecution on Feb. 10, including Pritchard’s, were four incidents of felons voting or registering to vote, four cases of non-citizens voting or registering to vote and one case of misplaced ballots during the 2020 general election, which didn’t change the outcome but did affect the total. Also bound over for prosecution were canvassers for two organizations trying to register people to vote, including one who allegedly submitted registration applications they knew were false.