A man accused of forging signatures on the election petitions of a local Congressional candidate was convicted Friday on a slew of charges stemming from the 2022 incident.
Kirk Rice, of Harmar, was paid $1,340 to circulate petitions for Democratic candidate Steve Irwin in a Democratic primary fight to replace outgoing Congressman Mike Doyle. But prosecutors with the state attorney general’s office, which tried the case, argued that Rice had forged signatures himself.
“This defendant deliberately undermined the integrity of Pennsylvania’s election process by falsifying signatures for financial gain,” said state Attorney General Dave Sunday in a statement after the verdict Friday. “This type of conduct … threatens the foundation of our democracy.”
The case took four years to close, but as WESA was the first to report at the time, questions about the validity of some of the signatures in Irwin’s petitions began to surface soon after they were filed.
U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon, whose name and address appeared on one petition, told WESA that she did not sign it, in part because federal judicial rules bar judges from doing so.
“It is obviously an unfortunate scenario that he perhaps finds himself in,” Bissoon told WESA in 2022.
A number of other voters whose signatures appear on the petitions told WESA, as well as other news outlets, that they had not signed the petitions, either.
Irwin’s campaign, which paid Rice for the signatures, denied knowledge of Rice’s activities. He lost the primary to then-state Rep. Summer Lee, whose eventual victory marked a generational shift in local political leadership.
Rice was charged by the state Attorney General’s office in late 2023, though a trial was delayed in part by a change in lawyers for the defense. A jury heard the case before Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Jennifer Satler this week — the same week that Lee won another Democratic primary on the way to securing a third term.
Sentencing has been set for August 17, but Rice’s attorney, Thomas E. Fitzgerald, said Friday afternoon, “We plan to appeal.”
Accusations that a signature has been forged are not uncommon in political campaigns, especially in cases where the circulator is paid to gather as many signatures as possible by a campaign. But criminal charges are almost unheard of.
Asked why it happened here, Fitzgerald echoed other observers when the case was first filed: “Well, it’s a federal judge involved.”
