Girl avoids jail for voting dead mom’s poll in Arizona

PHOENIX (AP) — A decide in Phoenix on Friday sentenced a woman o two years of felony probation, fines and neighborhood service for voting her dead mom’s ballot in Arizona in the 2020 basic election.

However the decide rejected a prosecutor’s request that she serve not less than 30 days in jail as a result of she lied to investigators and demanded that they hold those committing voter fraud accountable.

The case in opposition to Tracey Kay McKee, 64, is one in all just a handful of voter fraud instances from Arizona’s 2020 election that have led to costs, despite widespread belief among many supporters of former President Donald Trump that there was widespread voter fraud that led to his loss in Arizona and different battleground states.

McKee, who was from Phoenix suburb of Scottsdale however now lives in California, sobbed as she apologized to Maricopa County Superior Court docket Choose Margaret LaBianca earlier than the choose handed down her sentence. McKee said that she was grieving over the lack of her mom and had no intent to impression the end result of the election.

“Your Honor, I want to apologize,” McKee advised LaBianca. “I don’t want to make the excuse for my conduct. What I did was mistaken and I’m ready to accept the consequences handed down by the courtroom.”

Both McKee and her mom, Mary Arendt, have been registered Republicans, although she was not requested if she voted for Trump. Arendt died on Oct. 5, 2020, two days earlier than early ballots had been mailed to voters.

Assistant Attorney Common Todd Lawson played a tape of McKee being interviewed by an investigator together with his office where she said there was rampant voter fraud and denied that she had signed and returned her mom’s poll.

“The one option to prevent voter fraud is to physically go in and punch a poll,” McKee advised the investigator. “I mean, voter fraud goes to be prevalent as long as there’s mail-in voting, for sure. I imply, there’s no means to ensure a good election.

“And I don’t imagine that this was a good election,” she continued. “I do consider there was a number of voter fraud.”

Tom Henze, McKee’s attorney, pointed to dozens of circumstances of voter fraud prosecuted in Arizona over the previous decade, many for similar violations of voting another person’s poll, and mentioned no one obtained jail time in those instances. He said agreeing with Lawson that McKee should do 30 days jail time would raise constitutional problems with equity.

“Merely said, over an extended time period, in voluminous instances, 67 cases, no person in this state for similar circumstances, in similar context ... no person obtained jail time,” Henze mentioned. “The court docket didn’t impose jail time at all.”

However Lawson stated jail time was vital as a result of the kind of case has modified. Whereas in years past, most circumstances concerned people voting in two states as a result of they either lived in or had property in both states, within the 2020 election people had purchased into Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud.

“What we’re listening to is voter fraud is on the market,” Lawson advised the choose. “And essentially what we’re seeing right here is somebody who says ‘Well, I’m going to commit voter fraud because it’s an enormous problem and I’m simply going to slide in under the radar. And I’m going to do it as a result of all people else is doing it and I can get away with it.’

“I don’t subscribe to that in any respect,” he mentioned. “And I believe the angle you hear within the interview is the perspective that differentiates this case from the other circumstances.”

LaBianca said that while she agreed with Lawson, ordering jail time would give McKee what she told the investigator what she wished: going after people who committed voter fraud.

“And if there have been evidence that this crime was on the rise, and that heightened deterrence could also be known as for, the court might order jail time,” LaBianca mentioned. “However the report here doesn't present that this crime is on the rise.

“And abhorrent as it might be for somebody like the defendant to attack the legitimacy of our free elections without any evidence, besides your personal fraud, such statements are not illegal as far as I know,” the judge continued.