Woman avoids jail for voting lifeless mom’s poll in Arizona

PHOENIX (AP) — A judge in Phoenix on Friday sentenced a woman o two years of felony probation, fines and neighborhood service for voting her useless mom’s ballot in Arizona in the 2020 normal election.

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

The case against Tracey Kay McKee, 64, is one in every of just a handful of voter fraud circumstances from Arizona’s 2020 election which have led to expenses, despite 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 Courtroom Choose Margaret LaBianca before the decide handed down her sentence. McKee mentioned that she was grieving over the lack of her mom and had no intent to impression the end result of the election.

“Your Honor, I would like to apologize,” McKee informed LaBianca. “I don’t want to make the excuse for my behavior. What I did was fallacious and I’m ready to simply accept the results handed down by the court docket.”

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

Assistant Lawyer Normal Todd Lawson performed a tape of McKee being interviewed by an investigator along with his workplace the place she said there was rampant voter fraud and denied that she had signed and returned her mother’s ballot.

“The only approach to stop voter fraud is to physically go in and punch a poll,” McKee told the investigator. “I imply, voter fraud is going to be prevalent so long as there’s mail-in voting, for positive. I imply, there’s no method to ensure a fair election.

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

Tom Henze, McKee’s attorney, pointed to dozens of circumstances of voter fraud prosecuted in Arizona over the past decade, many for related violations of voting someone else’s ballot, and stated no one bought jail time in those cases. He said agreeing with Lawson that McKee ought to do 30 days jail time would raise constitutional problems with fairness.

“Merely stated, over a protracted time frame, in voluminous circumstances, 67 cases, nobody on this state for similar instances, in comparable context ... nobody bought jail time,” Henze stated. “The court didn’t impose jail time at all.”

However Lawson said jail time was vital as a result of the type of case has changed. Whereas in years past, most instances concerned individuals voting in two states because they both lived in or had property in both states, in the 2020 election individuals had bought into Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud.

“What we’re hearing is voter fraud is on the market,” Lawson advised the decide. “And basically what we’re seeing here is somebody who says ‘Effectively, I’m going to commit voter fraud because it’s an enormous problem and I’m simply going to slide in beneath the radar. And I’m going to do it because all people else is doing it and I can get away with it.’

“I don’t subscribe to that in any respect,” he stated. “And I think the angle you hear within the interview is the perspective that differentiates this case from the opposite instances.”

LaBianca said that whereas she agreed with Lawson, ordering jail time would give McKee what she advised 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 would possibly order jail time,” LaBianca mentioned. “However the document right here does not show that this crime is on the rise.

“And abhorrent as it could be for someone just like the defendant to assault the legitimacy of our free elections without any evidence, except your individual fraud, such statements are usually not illegal as far as I know,” the choose continued.