Lady avoids jail for voting useless 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 lifeless mother’s ballot in Arizona within the 2020 common election.

However the decide rejected a prosecutor’s request that she serve a minimum of 30 days in jail as a result of she lied to investigators and demanded that they hold these committing voter fraud accountable.

The case towards Tracey Kay McKee, 64, is certainly one of just a handful of voter fraud cases from Arizona’s 2020 election that have led to charges, regardless of widespread perception among 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 Court Judge Margaret LaBianca before the choose handed down her sentence. McKee mentioned that she was grieving over the lack of her mom and had no intent to influence the end result of the election.

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

Each McKee and her mom, Mary Arendt, had been registered Republicans, though she was not requested if she voted for Trump. Arendt died on Oct. 5, 2020, two days earlier than early ballots were mailed to voters.

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

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

“And I don’t believe that this was a good election,” she continued. “I do consider there was lots 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 someone else’s poll, and stated no one acquired jail time in those cases. He said agreeing with Lawson that McKee should do 30 days jail time would raise constitutional issues of equity.

“Simply stated, over a long time period, in voluminous instances, 67 instances, no person on this state for related cases, in similar context ... nobody obtained jail time,” Henze mentioned. “The court didn’t impose jail time in any respect.”

But Lawson stated jail time was important as a result of the kind of case has changed. Whereas in years previous, most circumstances concerned folks voting in two states as a result of they both lived in or had property in both states, within the 2020 election folks had bought into Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud.

“What we’re hearing is voter fraud is out there,” Lawson advised the choose. “And essentially what we’re seeing here is somebody who says ‘Well, I’m going to commit voter fraud because it’s an enormous downside and I’m just going to slip in underneath the radar. And I’m going to do it because everybody else is doing it and I can get away with it.’

“I don’t subscribe to that in any respect,” he stated. “And I feel the attitude you hear in the interview is the perspective that differentiates this case from the other cases.”

LaBianca stated that while she agreed with Lawson, ordering jail time would give McKee what she instructed the investigator what she wanted: 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 referred to as for, the court would possibly order jail time,” LaBianca mentioned. “However the document here does not show that this crime is on the rise.

“And abhorrent as it may be for someone just like the defendant to assault the legitimacy of our free elections without any proof, except your personal fraud, such statements will not be unlawful so far as I know,” the choose continued.