Elections administrator resigns following O’Keefe reveal of unsuspecting senior straw donors

Linda Lamone, the number two elections official for the State of Maryland, resigned yesterday following revelations of a scheme for political money laundering, in the names of unsuspecting senior citizen straw donors.

Elections admin says no comment, then resigns

Lamone, 80, announced her resignation yesterday at a meeting of Maryland’s elections board.

Other Board members were not happy to see her leave a position she has held for more than 25 years. One Board member explicitly said “the rewrite of the 1998 election law” created the position for her. When another member asked her whether she had set a date, she answered,

I’m working with the retirement people. I have a lot of stuff to do, and a lot of decisions to make, so I’m looking at probably September First.

Reporters for the O’Keefe Media Group had called her repeatedly for comment on their story about massive aggregate campaign contributions to Democratic campaigns, in the names of unsuspecting senior-citizen straw donors who, to judge by the modest homes in which they lived, could never have afforded to make such contributions, in such volume, on their own. Most of these contributions came through Act Blue, a sort of mass donations clearing house for leftist candidates.

She refused comment on Tuesday, but the next day she announced her resignation.

A controversial career

The O’Keefe Media Group has adduced no evidence (thus far) to suggest that Act Blue actually drained anyone’s bank accounts. Most of the senior citizens involved, acknowledged making donations in small individual and aggregate amounts. Yet FEC records listed them as having given tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. No subject, no matter how sympathetic to the left, has yet acknowledged giving such vast aggregate sums.

Aside from this latest story, Linda Lamone actually has had a controversial, even stormy, career. As Elections Administrator, she was the second-highest elections authority in Maryland after the Secretary of State. Detractors called that “1998 election law rewrite” the “Linda Lamone for Life Act,” because it took the appointment of her position out of the hands of State governors. In 2004 and again in 2020 came calls for her to resign. Also in 2020 came a call to make her position subject to a governor’s pleasure once again.

The Voting News has an extensive archive on her controversial tenure, including a raft of problems with a 2016 primary. Allegations of improper handling of 1,650 ballots in a Baltimore city primary dogged Lamone. These were provisional ballots that Officers of Election improperly scanned at the precinct. Provisional ballots must always be held for later review by a unit elections board.

One source insisted she had been planning her leavetaking in the fall of 2021.

Other sources

Reportage comes from Maryland Matters and WBAL Radio, in addition to James O’Keefe and his O’Keefe Media Group.