With all the noise Republicans are making about feigning to secure the ballot, it sure seems like it’s their side of the aisle getting caught committing election or voter fraud. For example, earlier this year, Frank Artiles, a former GOP legislator, was taken into custody on election fraud charges. And then there’s the case of McCrae Dowless, the North Carolina man who pleaded guilty on Monday in federal court to two crimes stemming from the investigation into the absentee ballot fraud scheme he’s accused of running.
And now we have Edward Snodgrass, a Porter Township trustee, who has admitted to voting twice in the 2020 presidential election, once forging his dead father’s signature on an absentee ballot and then voting again as himself, NBC News reports.
A Delaware County election worker questioned Snodgrass’s signature on his father’s ballot; then, a subsequent investigation revealed that the ballot had been mailed to H. Edward Snodgrass on Oct. 6. That date marked a day after the 78-year-old retired businessman died, according to the outlet.
Snodgrass, 57, spoke to NBC News and said that he made “an honest error” while struggling to take care of his dying father, who was suffering from advanced Parkinson’s disease. “He said he had power of attorney for several years and because his dad had broken his right arm he’d already been “signing for him.” He claimed that his father had requested the absentee ballot, the outlet reports.
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“It was there with a pile of other paperwork,” Snodgrass said. “I was sleep-deprived and not thinking clearly. But I’m not going to run away from it.”
Snodgrass declined to say who he voted for, but he did say that it would not be accurate to characterize what he did as “just Trump voter fraud,” and I have no idea what that means.
“I was simply trying to execute a dying man’s wishes,” he insisted.
There’s also the case of Crystal Mason, a Black woman who was sentenced to five years for voting in the 2016 election. The thing is that Mason thought she was eligible to vote. In contrast, Snodgrass knew what he was doing was illegal. Still, Snodgrass is due back in court on July 9 where, according to a plea agreement, he is expected to plead guilty to a reduced charge of falsification and receive a sentence of three days in jail and a $500 fine.
Sure, conservatives can say that this proves that voter fraud occurs, but it actually proves that the system works. Meaning that the perpetrators were caught. Widespread voter fraud, though, does not exist.
Featured image via Gage Skidmore/Flickr, under Creative Commons license 2.0
