The article is not very clear exactly why these two Dems wanted to place fraudulent tea party candidates on the ballot. But my guess is - since the rest of the media is ignoring the story - that the Democratic party officials wanted to dilute the GOP vote by putting fake tea party candidates on the ballot thus helping Democratic party candidates statewide.

You might recall similar charges against Democrats in several states prior to the election. The most prominent case was in Nevada where a tea party candidate was accused of being a ringer. The split in the conservative vote would obviously have helped Harry Reid.

In the Michigan case, the two Democratic party officials evidently fraudulently entered at least 23 candidates, identifying them as members of the tea party. Fox Detroit:

Two former leaders of the Oakland County Democratic Party are facing a total of nine felonies for allegedly forging election paperwork to get fake Tea Party candidates on November's ballot.

"It is not a partisan statement, and we need to make that very clear," said Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper.

Former Oakland County Democratic Chair Mike McGuinness and former Democratic Operations Director Jason Bauer face up to 14 years in prison if convicted.

"Some of the people didn't even know they were on the ballot till they began receiving delinquency notices of filings that were required as a candidate," said Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard.

The sheriff says 23 statewide races had questionable Tea Party candidates on the ballot and the investigation may go beyond Oakland County.

"It was learned that a scheme was developed by a party leader in Lansing to place on the ballot people pretending to be Tea Party activists and that this was going to be a statewide effort," Bouchard said.

John Tramontana, a spokesperson for the state Democratic Party, told FOX 2 that this was not a state party issue and it's not our place to comment.

"Not a partisan statement?" Why not? The entries were forged in order to split the Republican vote and give the Democrats a better chance to win. It's hard to imagine anything more partisan than that.

And don't you love the Dem spokesman saying it wasn't their place to comment? I bet they're praying that the whole thing can be hushed up and that it just goes away.