A northern Minnesota woman accused of trying 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 (322 kilometers) north of Minneapolis, said Monday that the improper vote was caught because the state provides a monthly list of people who’ve died to election officials, 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 county auditor’s office, which oversees local elections, quickly verified that the mother had died at the end 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 will lose the Nov. 5 election only if his political opponents cheat. There was no evidence of significant voter fraud in the 2020 election, which Trump lost, and there is no evidence Trump’s adversaries can or will rig this year’s election.
“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 so that those ballots don’t get through.”
OldSundance
Article URL : https://apnews.com/article/voter-fraud-mail-minnesota-dead-mother-07728368892dad330e1c5b058289c4f2