Woman avoids jail for voting lifeless mother’s poll in Arizona

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

But 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 these committing voter fraud accountable.

The case in opposition to Tracey Kay McKee, 64, is considered one of only a handful of voter fraud circumstances from Arizona’s 2020 election that have led to expenses, regardless of widespread belief amongst many supporters of former President Donald Trump that there was widespread voter fraud that led to his loss in Arizona and other 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 Decide Margaret LaBianca before the choose handed down her sentence. McKee mentioned that she was grieving over the loss of her mother and had no intent to affect the result of the election.

“Your Honor, I wish to apologize,” McKee advised LaBianca. “I don’t want to make the excuse for my habits. What I did was fallacious and I’m prepared to simply accept the results handed down by the court.”

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

Assistant Legal professional Basic Todd Lawson performed a tape of McKee being interviewed by an investigator along with his office where she said there was rampant voter fraud and denied that she had signed and returned her mother’s ballot.

“The only strategy to stop voter fraud is to bodily go in and punch a poll,” McKee told the investigator. “I imply, voter fraud goes to be prevalent so long as there’s mail-in voting, for positive. I mean, there’s no way to make sure a good election.

“And I don’t imagine that this was a fair election,” she continued. “I do believe there was lots of voter fraud.”

Tom Henze, McKee’s lawyer, pointed to dozens of instances of voter fraud prosecuted in Arizona over the previous decade, many for comparable violations of voting another person’s poll, and stated no one obtained jail time in these instances. He said agreeing with Lawson that McKee ought to do 30 days jail time would increase constitutional issues of fairness.

“Simply said, over a long time period, in voluminous cases, 67 instances, no one on this state for related instances, in comparable context ... nobody obtained jail time,” Henze said. “The courtroom didn’t impose jail time at all.”

However Lawson mentioned jail time was vital because the kind of case has modified. While in years previous, most instances involved people voting in two states because they either lived in or had property in each states, in the 2020 election people had purchased into Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud.

“What we’re hearing is voter fraud is out there,” Lawson advised the judge. “And essentially what we’re seeing right here is someone who says ‘Nicely, I’m going to commit voter fraud as a result of it’s an enormous downside and I’m simply going to slip in underneath the radar. And I’m going to do it as a result of everybody else is doing it and I can get away with it.’

“I don’t subscribe to that in any respect,” he mentioned. “And I feel the attitude you hear in the interview is the attitude that differentiates this case from the opposite instances.”

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

“And if there have been evidence that this crime was on the rise, and that heightened deterrence may be known as for, the court docket would possibly order jail time,” LaBianca stated. “However the file here does not show that this crime is on the rise.

“And abhorrent as it may be for someone like the defendant to attack the legitimacy of our free elections with none evidence, besides your personal fraud, such statements usually are not unlawful so far as I do know,” the decide continued.