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An Ohio lawyer is hoping a decide acquits him after he admitted to illegally voting in two of the final basic elections.
James Saunders, aged 56, has been charged with two felony counts of voter fraud.
Saunders, a Shaker Heights legal professional, reportedly solid his vote in each Cuyahoga County, Ohio, and Broward County, Florida, throughout the identical election cycles. Scott Roger Hurley, the assistant public defender assigned to his case, argued that he exercised his voting rights in each areas as he’s a property proprietor and registered voter in each locations, in accordance with Cleveland.com.
The defendant opted to have Cuyahoga County Widespread Pleas Courtroom decide Andrew Santoli ship a verdict in his case as an alternative of a jury of his friends.
His lawyer requested Santoli to “come to a simply end result” that acknowledges that his consumer made a mistake and the consumer shouldn’t be held criminally liable.
Andrew Rogalski, an assistant county prosecutor, countered that argument, saying the protection that Saunders made a mistake may need labored if the Trump supporter had solely voted in two totally different states as soon as. However he did it twice.
“The truth that you do this in consecutive basic elections I feel takes ‘accident’ to the land of imaginary doubt and never affordable doubt,” Rogalski stated.
Saunders is an energetic Republican with a historical past of supporting the GOP financially.
Federal Elections Fee filings famous that Saunders made month-to-month donations to then-President Donald Trump’s reelection campaigns and conservative political teams throughout the years in query.
In the course of the courtroom proceedings, witnesses, together with elections officers from Cuyahoga County and Broward County, Florida, in addition to an Ohio Bureau of Prison Investigations agent, supplied testimony concerning Saunders’ voting actions.
The witnesses testified on Oct. 21, 2020, that Saunders solid an in-person vote on the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. Across the similar time, he additionally requested an absentee poll to be despatched to an handle he utilized in rural Virginia.
Eleven days later, on Nov. 1, 2020, cellphone tower data positioned the Republican’s cellphone at his Virginia handle, the place he wished the poll to go. It by no means arrived.
Saunders was later tracked driving right down to his Florida handle, the place he voted in particular person on Nov. 3, 2020, Election Day.
An analogous incident occurred in 2022.
Witnesses testified that Saunders voted by mail in Broward County on Nov. 2, 2022, however then proceeded to vote on Nov. 8, 2022, in particular person at his precinct in Shaker Heights.
In each cases, Hurley claimed his consumer’s actions had been unintentional.
Saunders’ case is much like Tracey Kay McKee’s. In 2020, McKee, additionally a Republican, was sentenced to 2 years of probation and fines after being convicted of voting in her mom’s title in Arizona. Her mom died a month earlier than that 12 months’s election.
Whereas Saunders and McKee, each white Republicans, deliberately violated voting guidelines, Pamela Moses, a Black Lives Matter activist, who served time for felonious election fraud, didn’t try and fraudulently vote on account of a mistake by state officers.
She has since filed a federal lawsuit alleging officers in a “reckless and malicious” trend violated her civil rights as they sought prosecution, even after discovering she was harmless. The criticism is presently unresolved.
Crystal Mason is awaiting the outcomes of her last enchantment to keep away from imprisonment for unlawful voting. In 2018, she was sentenced to 5 years behind bars for casting a vote within the 2016 Tarrant County election whereas ineligible. Mason, who was on supervised launch for a earlier tax violation, solid a provisional poll in 2016, which was not counted, and she or he acquired help from a ballot employee.
The central query in Mason’s enchantment was whether or not she knew it was unlawful to solid that poll. Her attorneys argued she had no data of the prohibition, whereas the prosecution contended that she did.
The choice from Santoli concerning Saunders’ case can be rendered throughout a scheduled listening to on Aug. 8.
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