How Itasca County caught alleged dead voter fraud

A northern Minnesota woman accused of trying to submit an absentee ballot on behalf of her recently deceased mother has been charged with three felonies, showing how routine election security thwarts rare cases of attempted voter fraud.

Officials in Itasca County, about 200 miles north of Minneapolis, said Monday that the invalid vote was detected because the state provides election officials each month with a list of people who have died, who then flag those names in the state’s voter registration database. The woman returned ballots for herself and her mother in early October, and the auditor’s office, which oversees municipal elections, quickly confirmed that the mother had died in late August, almost three weeks before mail-in ballots began to be mailed out.

A criminal case was filed last week in state district court in Grand Rapids involving former President Donald Trump he continued to suggest he will only lose the November 5 election if his political opponents cheat. There was no evidence of significant voter fraud in the 2020 elections, which Trump lost, and there is no evidence that Trump’s opponents can or will steal this year’s election.

The woman told a sheriff’s deputy in an interview that she filled out her mother’s ballot after her death, according to a probable cause affidavit filed in district court. The statement said the woman was a “staunch” Trump supporter and wanted to vote for him before her death.

Itasca County Attorney Jake Fauchald said the case shows that election officials can spot problems and that even rural counties have the resources and willingness to pursue voter fraud. Itasca County has a population of approximately 45,000.

“It was reported almost immediately,” Fauchald said. “We have ways of catching and flagging fraudulent ballots, and we’re going to do something about it to make sure these ballots don’t get through.”

The woman will appear in court for the first time on December 4. She was charged with one count of illegal voting and two counts of preparing or signing a false certificate, and is accused of forging her mother’s signature both on the mother’s envelope and as a witness on her own. Each charge carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.

It was unclear whether the woman had a lawyer, and 10 online telephone listings for her were inactive. She did not immediately respond to a Facebook message seeking comment on Monday.

Fauchald said this is the county’s first case of voter fraud during the current election cycle.

An Associated Press investigation into the 2020 election examined every potential case of voter fraud in six battleground states contested by Trump and found that there was less than 475 of the millions of votes cast is not enough to determine the result. Democrat Joe Biden won in six states with a total of 311,257 votes.

In Minnesota, Itasca County Auditor Austin Rohling said that in his nearly two years in office he has not seen a “nefarious” case in which someone cast a ballot on behalf of a deceased person. Sometimes, he said, someone fills out a ballot, returns it and dies before Election Day. In this case, it is not counted under Minnesota law.

Sixteen other states prohibit vote counting thrown by a person who then dies before the election, but 10 states explicitly allow it. According to research by the National Conference of State Legislatures, the law is silent in the rest of the country.

Rohling said “weird things happen” in elections “at an extremely small level,” but very few of those incidents involve intentional fraud.

“The system works as it should,” Rohling said.

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Hanna reported from Topeka, Kansas.

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