A northern Minnesota woman accused of attempting to submit a mail ballot for her recently deceased mother has been charged with three felonies, showing how routine election safeguards thwart rare instances of attempted voter fraud.
Officials in Itasca County, about 200 miles north of Minneapolis, said Monday that the improper vote was caught since the state provides a monthly list of people that’ve died to election officials, who then flag those names within the state’s voter registration database. The lady returned ballots for herself and her mother in early October, and the county auditor’s office, which oversees local elections, quickly verified that the mother had died at the tip of August, almost three weeks before it began mailing out absentee ballots.
The criminal case was filed last week in state district court in Grand Rapids as former President Donald Trump continued to suggest he’ll lose the Nov. 5 election provided that his political opponents cheat. There was no evidence of serious voter fraud within the 2020 election, which Trump lost, and there isn’t a evidence Trump’s adversaries can or will rig this 12 months’s election.
The lady told a sheriff’s lieutenant in an interview that she filled out her mother’s ballot after her mother’s death, in response to a probable cause statement filed with the district court. The statement said the girl was an “ardent” Trump supporter who had desired to vote for him before she died.
Itasca County Attorney Jake Fauchald said the case shows election officials can catch problems and even rural counties have the resources and willingness to prosecute election fraud. Itasca County has about 45,000 residents.
“It was flagged almost immediately,” Fauchald said. “We do have ways of catching and flagging these fraudulent ballots and we’re going to do something about it in order that those ballots don’t get through.”
The lady’s first court appearance is ready for Dec. 4. She is charged with one count of illegal voting and two counts of creating or signing a false certificate, accused of forging her mother’s signature, each on the mother’s ballot envelope, and as a witness on her own. Each charge carries a maximum penalty of 5 years in prison and a advantageous of as much as $10,000.
It was not clear whether the girl has an attorney, and 10 telephone listings for her online were out of service. She didn’t immediately respond Monday to a Facebook message searching for comment.
Fauchald said it’s the county’s first case involving voter fraud throughout the current election cycle.
An Associated Press investigation of the 2020 election explored every potential case of voter fraud within the six battleground states disputed by Trump and located there have been fewer than 475 out of thousands and thousands of votes forged, not enough to tip the final result. Democrat Joe Biden won the six states by a combined 311,257 votes.
In Minnesota, Itasca County Auditor Austin Rohling said he hasn’t seen a “nefarious” case of somebody casting a ballot for a dead person in his nearly two years in office. He said occasionally, someone fills out a ballot, returns it after which dies before Election Day. In that case, it isn’t counted under Minnesota law.
Sixteen other states prohibit counting ballots forged by someone who subsequently dies before the election, but 10 states specifically allow it. The law is silent in the remainder of the country, in response to research by the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Rohling said that “strange things occur” in elections “on a particularly minor level,” but only a few of those incidents involve intentional fraud.
“The system’s working the way in which it should,” Rohling said.
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Hanna reported from Topeka, Kansas.