10 new cases of vote fraud again demonstrate imperative of election security

By Hans von Spakovsky and Katie Samalis-Aldrich

In the latest update to The Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database, 10 new cases have been added, bringing the current count to 1,422 proven instances of election fraud.

Hans von Spakovsky is a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.

While not an exhaustive or comprehensive list, the database presents a sampling of cases from across the country that demonstrate the reality that fraud does occur and that lawmakers need to implement the types of safeguards outlined in Heritage’s Election Integrity Scorecard that can help secure both access to, and the integrity of, the election process. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

Here are the latest highlights, which occurred in several states ranging from New York and Michigan to Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, and which also demonstrate that election fraud is a bipartisan activity.

  • In New York, Jason Schofield, a Republican elections commissioner for the Rensselaer County Board of Elections in Troy, was charged by federal authorities with 12 felony counts of unlawfully possessing and using the identifications of other people to fraudulently request, complete, and submit absentee ballots on behalf of voters.

Schofield, and other election board employees under his direction, requested absentee ballots on behalf of eight voters without their knowledge or permission using the New York State Board of Elections website. Schofield personally handled four of these ballots; for another four voters, Schofield filled out the ballots but then told the voters to sign the ballots they did not complete.

Schofield pleaded guilty on all 12 felony counts and resigned from his position as commissioner. He will be required to pay an assessment of $1,200 at sentencing, and he faces a maximum of five years in prison and fines of up to $250,000 when he is sentenced.

  • In another case of governmental misconduct, the Democratic township clerk in Flint, Michigan, Kathy Funk, was convicted of felony ballot tampering and felony misconduct in office. Funk was convicted due to her actions in the 2020 primary election, where she was a candidate on the ballot. She broke into the Flint Township Hall and opened a sealed ballot canister, thus invalidating the votes inside.

Funk then filed a false police report claiming that a third party committed the break-in. As a result of this malfeasance, Funk won her election by 79 votes, but the police noted irregularities immediately and began investigating her. Her employment with the state of Michigan was terminated in December, and she is currently awaiting sentencing.

  • James Bartlett and Troy Kemper, of Lawrenceburg, Indiana, were convicted of felony perjury and fraudulent subscription of another person’s name in connection with a ballot-trafficking scheme.

Bartlett, a former employee of the city of Lawrenceburg who was terminated for his involvement in the scheme, and Kemper submitted as many as 20 fraudulent absentee ballots. Officials discovered the fraud when they noticed that the signatures on the ballots did not match those on the original voter-registration forms.

The Dearborn County Board of Elections contacted the individuals and learned that none of the 20 people had applied for an absentee ballot or permitted Kemper to return absentee ballots on their behalf.

Kemper was sentenced to one year in jail and a $210 fine, with 363 days of the sentence suspended, in exchange for his cooperation and testimony against Bartlett. Bartlett was sentenced to 910 days in prison, 40 hours of community service, and assessed court costs of $1,285.

There were also three instances of felons voting in the new batch.

  • In Moore County, North Carolina, two individuals were convicted of voter registration fraud after registering to vote despite being felons who had not completed their sentences.

Bruce Edward Johnson, a convicted murderer who should have been in prison, registered to vote during the 2014 general election. Due to a series of errors, he was never taken back into custody after his appeal was denied in 1984.

Bronwyn Louisa Johnson also registered to vote despite being ineligible, since she was still on probation for her felony conviction.

Bruce Johnson’s sentence was added to the life sentence he is now serving for the previous murder conviction, and Bronwyn Johnson was sentenced to a year of unsupervised probation and assessed court costs and fees of $1,254.50.

  • In Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, Lisa Campion was convicted of illegal voting despite being ineligible, since she was a convicted felon on probation. Campion also voted in a different town than where she actually lives.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission discovered this through an audit of suspected felons voting. She pleaded no contest to one count of misdemeanor falsifying voter registration and was ordered to pay $1,083.

We also had a few instances of duplicate voting in our latest entries. Keep in mind that every duplicate vote that was fraudulently cast canceled the legitimate vote of an eligible voter.

  • Steve Curtis Thompson II was convicted in Moore County, North Carolina, of voter registration fraud after voting twice in the 2012 general election. Thompson voted in person in North Carolina and through an absentee ballot in Florida. He pleaded guilty and was ordered to pay $225 in court costs.
  • In Florida, John Rider of the Village of Virginia Trace was charged with casting more than one ballot in an election, a felony. Rider voted twice in the 2020 general election, once in person in Florida and again in New York using an absentee ballot. He was sentenced to a pretrial diversion program, ordered to complete 50 hours of community service, and assessed fines and court costs of $400. Presumably, the charges will be reduced or dropped if he successfully completes the program.
  • Finally, Roland Bauer, of Winter Springs, Florida, was charged with one count of fraud in connection with casting a vote and one count of mail-in ballot fraud. In the 2020 general election, Bauer requested, filled out, and submitted a ballot in Florida on behalf of his son, who lives in New Mexico.

The son contacted Florida law enforcement to report that someone had submitted a ballot on his behalf in Florida, even though he hadn’t lived in the state for more than seven years and was now registered to vote in New Mexico.

Bauer was ordered to take part in a 24-month pretrial diversion program. (The charges will be dropped if he successfully completes the program.) Additionally, he was ordered to pay $50 per month during the diversion program and was assessed $5,519.36 in court fees.

These cases illustrate that fraud continues to occur in our elections.  Sometimes, it’s an isolated case and the theft of a single vote, such as those of Rider and Bauer in Florida. Other times, it’s an organized effort to steal multiple votes, such as those of Schofield in New York and Bartlett and Kemper in Indiana.

Regardless of who is doing it or their political party affiliation, it’s important that all Americans understand the reality of election fraud in the United States and that legislators and prosecutors take it seriously.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Mark Gunn

9 thoughts on “10 new cases of vote fraud again demonstrate imperative of election security

  1. Despite the many examples of perversion of the vote, from vote weighing and tabulation skewing, Vermont CHOSE to install new suspect tabulator machines all across the state, with the grand announcement that without any ports they can’t be hacked. Well, yes they can. Anyone who has checked out with a tap of a card instead of an inserted card demonstrates this. Further, my mail in ballot looked markedly different from the ballot I received at the polling station, the former had QR codes on it. When scanned these could tell the machine to weigh the vote differently. Why not, here in Vermont, simply hand count them. Why NOT? Why must we have doubt? What is the purpose and reason for installing Dominion machines adding QR codes and refusing the mighty trust that comes with hand counting? To boot, the Sec of State has ignored a freedom of information request on the topic.

    • Judicial watch identified VT as one of the states that sent out more ballots than registered voters.

  2. Conspiracy to commit fraud can yield hefty penalties. When does a bird sing? How many whistleblowers does it take to build a case for criminal fraud? How many little rats turn on the big rats to save their own hides? The swamp runs far and wide. The yokes are hanging heavy on many necks these days. Is the weight becoming too much for some to bear? Is that why they are stepping down? Fraud efficerates many a contract and sends many to prison. The heat of the light is squarely pointed into the dark recesses of many minds these days. Keep shining that light on them – all of them.

  3. 1,442 fraudulent voters– out of how many votes cast in total? 70,000,000? Hans is clutching his pearls for the wrong reason.

    We’re dealing with voter fraud the way we dealt with Medicare fraud in Florida– fretting about the Munchausen Syndrome grandma who was visiting five or six doctors rather than looking at CEO Rick Scott defrauding Medicare for $84 billion.

    Real voter fraud happened in Waukesha County, Wisconsin when the clerk sabotaged the vote count (tens of thousands of ballots) during the recall election of then-gov Scott Walker– he would have been recalled had she not done the GOP’s bidding (the Koch-owned state court system protected her afterward).

    Citing 0.000001 percent of individual cases is like pointing at a homeless person to divert public attention from the bank robbery happening across the street. In this case, the robbery is the denial of non-whites’ right to vote.

    • Whhaa? Outright false and a lie: you state, “In this case, the robbery is the denial of non-whites’ right to vote”. They lied same in in GA elcetion recently….Black turnout to VOTE ws highest ever. There was no denial of blacks able to vote. Furthermore? all this stuff about voter ID discriminates against Blacks/ REAAAALLLY? if you believe that you are a racist (or just plain blind stupid)…because a Black can’t open a bank account w/o ID. You can’t get a mortgage w/o one. You can’t get a credit card. you can’t join the military.. You can’t sign up for Social Security, Medicare or Welfare w/o ID. You need ID for food stamps/SNAP. EVERY Federal building in the USA is unaccessible to any Blacks – without showing an ID to get in. A black can’t get on a PLANE w/o ID……a Black can’t get a Passport w/o ID. A younger Black can’t buy cigarettes or booze w/o showing an ID of his age. You can’t rent an apartment w/o proof of who you are. You can’t register a CAR w/o ID. You cannot get a DRIVERS LISCENSE w/o ID. SO? WHAT is the big deal to ask for ID to vote? Your claims are spurious, factual, lies…as mot liberals do oh-s- easily. A Black can’t even go visit their Senator of Congressman in DC, to COMPLAIN ABOUT ID’s…WITHOUT SHOWING AN ID TO GET INTO THE CAPITOL BUILDING. Ergo? THE FEDERAL GOV’T IS RACIST :)…by your twisted “Logik”

      • Oh, and you cannot get a Hotel or Motel room w/o an ID.

        May I ask – what “Planet of Lies” you are from? What is it you cannot see or understand? Liberals always baffle me with their total ignorance to whatever propaganda is fed to them…When the reality & facts are opposite of what you believe.

      • It’s not producing an ID that’s the restriction; it’s the wholesale banning of registered voters for such things as having the same last name as a convicted felon– look at what the Secretary of State in Florida did (and has continued to do) in 2000. All this foofaraw about 1,400 illegal voters is just cover for caging non-white voters en masse.

        • 1,400 that got caught and convicted. Do you imagine the number of lawbreakers is only as great as those who are caught and convicted? That’s like assuming the number of people who exceed the speed limit does not exceed the number who get a ticket. There are videos of a truck making a delivery after the deadline for voting. Votes found in dumpsters. Look into the 2016 Jill Stein Detroit recount – when opened for counting, sealed and verified ballot boxes were found to be nearly empty despite higher verified numbers – the counts got thrown out and the recount cancelled. (I don’t know how the DNC ever let her demand that recount)

        • cgregory stop pretending we have fair elections and that an ID keeps people from voting. At best your stuck on stupid. At worst your a communist.

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