On Monday, following the news that Vladimir Golovan was convicted on 10 of 12 charges of forgery for his part in running the signature gathering campaign for Lucinda Tate, the editors at BlueOregon posted a piece asking, “Given that this fraud was discovered prior to the election, does this mean that the system worked? Or should we expect campaign finance systems to be immune to bad behavior from scam artists?”

Dave Lister, a former city council candidate and frequent critic of the public campaign funding program (and Blogtown regular), jumped in, laying the blame at the feet of the city auditor, Gary Blackmer:

All the players in this saga seem slimy, but I would still like to hear an explanation from Gary Blackmer as to how those clearly fraudulent signatures passed muster in his office. What exactly was the dynamic in his office, or the back and forth between he and Susan Francois, the elections officer at the time, that allowed Boyles to be given the money. From what I’ve heard, they randomly sampled a few signatures and checked a Portland phone book to make sure they were in residence. Based on what I saw on KATU’s website, a ten year old would have spotted the fraud.

You have to wonder if Blackmer’s zeal to see the system he co-authored succeed clouded his judgement in making the grant.

One thousand signatures is not very many. I hope the public campaign finance commission has insisted that each and every one of them be verified, rather than some kind of random sampling.

Strong words, Lister! Even a 10-year-old could have caught it!

That got “some people” wondering…if a 10-year-old could have caught Golovan’s signature fraud, how well could a 52-year-old city council candidate do in checking his own paperwork? As it turns out, Lister probably could have used that 10-year-old to double check his own filings.

On four separate contributions and expenditures reports (pdf) during his 2006 effort to unseat Erik Sten, Lister listed one of his donors, Rob Kremer ($450), as being the president of the Oregon Education Association, the state’s teachers union and the largest public employee union in the state.

Kremer is not only not the president of the OEA, but he’s also probably one of the organization’s biggest detractors. He’s an active advocate of charter schools, and ran for superintendent of education in 2002 on a platform of saving money by firing state employees. He and the OEA don’t exactly have a lot in common, leading one observer to wonder if giving Kremer that title was some kind of “lame libertarian humor.”

Kremer is, however, the president (sole member?) of the Oregon Education Coalition, whose mission is “helping teachers and parents take their schools back from the bureaucrats.”

Lister, who hadn’t realized the mistake until I pointed it out to him today, says he wasn’t trying to fool anyone, and that the name flub (only off by one word, but one very, very important word) was the result of trying to run his campaign—including all of the paperwork—by himself.

“I simply messed up and entered the name wrong,” he says. “I was doing all the reporting paperwork in the AM (early, like 3) and I was cutting and pasting from earlier reports to save time. I can only guess that I made the mistake on the initial contribution and simply copied it forward. I’ll get on the campaign reporting database this weekend and see if there’s a way I can correct it. I wasn’t trying to hide or confuse anything.”

As they say, mistakes happen. Which is why everyone needs a 10-year-old on retainer.

Or maybe just stronger coffee.