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

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

However the choose rejected a prosecutor’s request that she serve at least 30 days in jail because she lied to investigators and demanded that they hold these committing voter fraud accountable.

The case against Tracey Kay McKee, 64, is one of only a handful of voter fraud cases from Arizona’s 2020 election which have led to prices, regardless of widespread belief among 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 Judge Margaret LaBianca before the choose handed down her sentence. McKee stated that she was grieving over the lack of her mother and had no intent to impact the result of the election.

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

Both McKee and her mother, Mary Arendt, were registered Republicans, though 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 Lawyer General Todd Lawson played a tape of McKee being interviewed by an investigator with his workplace the place she said there was rampant voter fraud and denied that she had signed and returned her mother’s poll.

“The one strategy to stop voter fraud is to bodily go in and punch a ballot,” McKee informed the investigator. “I mean, voter fraud goes to be prevalent so long as there’s mail-in voting, for sure. I imply, there’s no method to ensure a good election.

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

Tom Henze, McKee’s lawyer, pointed to dozens of cases of voter fraud prosecuted in Arizona over the previous decade, many for comparable violations of voting someone else’s ballot, and stated no one got jail time in these instances. He stated agreeing with Lawson that McKee should do 30 days jail time would increase constitutional problems with equity.

“Simply stated, over a protracted time frame, in voluminous circumstances, 67 cases, no one in this state for similar circumstances, in similar context ... nobody obtained jail time,” Henze stated. “The court docket didn’t impose jail time at all.”

But Lawson said jail time was vital as a result of the kind of case has changed. Whereas in years past, most circumstances involved individuals voting in two states as a result of they either lived in or had property in each states, in the 2020 election folks had bought into Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud.

“What we’re listening to is voter fraud is on the market,” Lawson informed the choose. “And primarily what we’re seeing right here is someone who says ‘Nicely, I’m going to commit voter fraud as a result of it’s a big drawback and I’m just going to slide in beneath the radar. And I’m going to do it as a result of everyone else is doing it and I can get away with it.’

“I don’t subscribe to that at all,” he mentioned. “And I think the attitude you hear in the interview is the attitude that differentiates this case from the other circumstances.”

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

“And if there were evidence that this crime was on the rise, and that heightened deterrence may be known as for, the court might order jail time,” LaBianca said. “But the record here doesn't show that this crime is on the rise.

“And abhorrent as it might be for somebody just like the defendant to assault the legitimacy of our free elections with none proof, besides your personal fraud, such statements will not be unlawful as far as I know,” the decide continued.