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

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

However the decide rejected a prosecutor’s request that she serve no 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 against Tracey Kay McKee, 64, is one among just a handful of voter fraud cases from Arizona’s 2020 election that have led to charges, despite widespread perception amongst 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 but now lives in California, sobbed as she apologized to Maricopa County Superior Courtroom Judge Margaret LaBianca before the judge handed down her sentence. McKee mentioned that she was grieving over the lack of her mother and had no intent to impact the outcome of the election.

“Your Honor, I would like to apologize,” McKee advised LaBianca. “I don’t need to make the excuse for my habits. What I did was unsuitable and I’m prepared to just accept the results handed down by the court docket.”

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

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

“The only option to forestall voter fraud is to physically go in and punch a poll,” McKee advised the investigator. “I mean, voter fraud is going to be prevalent so long as there’s mail-in voting, for positive. I mean, there’s no approach to ensure a good election.

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

Tom Henze, McKee’s attorney, pointed to dozens of instances of voter fraud prosecuted in Arizona over the past decade, many for comparable violations of voting another person’s poll, and mentioned nobody acquired jail time in those instances. He mentioned agreeing with Lawson that McKee ought to do 30 days jail time would raise constitutional problems with equity.

“Merely said, over a protracted time frame, in voluminous cases, 67 cases, no person on this state for similar circumstances, in similar context ... no one acquired jail time,” Henze stated. “The courtroom didn’t impose jail time at all.”

However Lawson stated jail time was important because the kind of case has changed. While in years past, most circumstances concerned 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 purchased into Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud.

“What we’re listening to is voter fraud is on the market,” Lawson instructed the choose. “And essentially what we’re seeing right here is someone who says ‘Properly, I’m going to commit voter fraud because it’s a big problem and I’m simply going to slide in under 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 feel the angle you hear in the interview is the attitude that differentiates this case from the opposite instances.”

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

“And if there were evidence that this crime was on the rise, and that heightened deterrence could also be known as for, the court docket would possibly order jail time,” LaBianca said. “However the file right here doesn't show that this crime is on the rise.

“And abhorrent as it may be for somebody 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 judge continued.