Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach has confirmed a Florida man was arrested last week for forging signatures on petitions to make “No Labels” an officially recognized political party in Kansas.
The attorney general’s office said 30-year-old George Andrews, of Dade City, Florida, is charged with dozens of counts of election misconduct. Pending extradition, Andrews will appear in Johnson County District Court .
In a statement, Kobach said “the arrested individual was part of a scheme to defraud Kansas voters by placing their forged signatures on petitions. In Kansas, we take election fraud seriously, and we will prosecute every case where the evidence indicates a crime has been committed beyond a reasonable doubt.”
An investigation led to Andrews being charged with two counts of election perjury and 28 counts of election forgery.
In 2015, the legislature gave the Attorney General and Secretary of State offices authority to prosecute elections crimes in Kansas. Kobach successfully prosecuted 12 cases of election fraud in his former position as Secretary of State.
