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February 11, 2019 11:57 AM UTC

Stop The Presses: A Real-Life Vote Fraud Case!

  • 20 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols
Actually, don’t. They’ll catch you.

As the Grand Junction Sentinel’s Amy Hamilton reports, and by God every time it happens somebody ought to let you know–if for no other reason than to remind you how rarely it happens:

A Grand Junction woman was arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor voter fraud after she allegedly cast a mail-in ballot for her adult son last fall after becoming frustrated that her adult children didn’t seem to be voting, according to the Mesa County District Attorney’s Office.

Gail Arlene Gray, 66, told an investigator she “did a terrible thing” but she was “really (angry) at my kids for not voting, none of them were voting and then that (ballot) came in the mail and I didn’t even think, I thought I am going to vote for him…” according to an arrest affidavit released Thursday…

In a phone call on Jan. 30, the son told the investigator he had talked to his mom and learned she had voted for him. When asked by the investigator, the son said his mother’s voting choices were “not necessarily” how he voted but he “did not have hard feelings about it,” the affidavit said.

Now before anyone starts pointing partisan fingers, we looked up Gail Arlene Gray’s voter registration, and she’s unaffiliated. Considering that allegations of voter fraud are almost both exclusively leveled by Republicans and (in Colorado, anyway) and almost exclusively committed by Republicans, up to and including a former chairman of the Colorado Republican Party–but in this case, what you have is a mother upset that her son was complacent about doing his civic duty. So Mom decided to take care of it herself.

Which is, of course, a crime.

As the Sentinel reports, the fraudulent vote was caught by the system working as intended, when the son turned up at a vote center to vast a ballot in person. After confirming that a mail ballot had already been cast in his name, a signature check revealed that he wasn’t the signer–and soon after that, Mom confessed to voting on his behalf. Because Gail Arlene Gray has no criminal record, and owing to her age and cooperation with investigators, she is only facing misdemeanor election fraud charges.

The incident marks the only case of suspected voter fraud in Mesa County for the 2018 election cycle, Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein said. [Pols emphasis]

Again, it’s important to take note of these bonafide cases of election fraud when they occur. Republicans from President Donald Trump all the way down to state and local officials regularly invoke the specter of “illegal voters” subverting our elections, from former Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler’s baseless claims of tens of thousands of such voters in Colorado to more recent and very similar allegations of “95,000 illegal voters” in Texas. Gessler’s claims about Colorado voters totally collapsed under scrutiny, and those “thousands” of fraudulent votes boiled down to fewer than five actual cases.

With the actual incidence of election fraud in Colorado an infinitesimal fraction of what the usual suspects claim it is, the argument for any of the “solution” measures proposed in response becomes much more difficult. To stop thousands of fraudulent voters, a crackdown that prevents some fewer thousands of voters from lawfully participating might be more justifiable. But to effectively disenfranchise thousands in order to prevent…one case? Even five cases? That’s a “solution” in search of a problem. A cure worse than the disease.

And it’s based on one of the biggest falsehoods in politics today.

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20 thoughts on “Stop The Presses: A Real-Life Vote Fraud Case!”

  1. Nice there was some ambiguity in the "unaffiliated" registration of the offender.

    And how ironic — she was was “really (angry) at my kids for not voting, none of them were voting" and then she gets popped because one of them voted. 

    I am curious how the Thanksgiving or Christmas Dinner family dinner conversation went.  Suppose the GJ paper might consider a follow-up, going to the next family gathering?

     

    1. Sadly, the Sentinel has shrunk to so few reporters it's surprising the story was done at all. That said, follow-ups have not been a strong suit for a few years.

  2. A 66-year old mom, with an “adult” (40 something?) son living at the same address probably has gotten routinely used to “tak[ing] care of things for herself”?  

    It would be interesting to know how her kid “voted,” but I’m guessing since she was arrested, and it is GJ, the kid probably didn’t “vote” for Stapleton or Tipton?

    Pity what Fluffy’s grammy must have to deal with . . . 

    1. Not necessarily living at the same address. The guy might just have written down his mom's as a permanent address. We've had friends use ours when they were in transitory situations. But once a person lights somewhere, they really ought to update it.

      1. Obviously not out pf the realm of possibility, but the misdemeanorer didn’t say, “[I’m] really (angry) that my kids haven’t voted, early, yet”, she said, “[I’m] really (angry) at my kids for not voting, none of them were voting and then that (ballot) came in the mail and I didn’t even think, I thought I am going to vote for him.”  

        She didn’t give sonny the benefit of the doubt that he would vote, or even that he might choose or prefer to vote in-person.  

        This doesn’t sound like a one-election temporary mail-drop situation to me . . .

        . . . you could be right, and there could even be other possibilities (e.g., she’s living at sonny’s house, and giving her daughter-in-law nightmares and fits), but I gotta’ believe that high probability favors my version, or something closer to it???

      1. Planet Moderatus.  Located outside the orbit of Pluto, in the Kuiper Belt, Moderatus is technically a planetesimal.  Recent images from the New Horizons spacecraft have shown that the object is shaped roughly like a bottle of Jergens lotion.

        Inhabitants of the body are prone to Tourette's-like outbursts of far-right ideology.  They also have powerful prognosticative powers, enabling them to predict future events, unfortunately, always incorrectly.

          2. I'm confused.  If you don't know who that is, why'd you assume "Moderatus" was a person?

            Also, I certainly don't mind my bitchiness being acknowledged, but I would request that, in the future, you do it in meme form:

      1. Since he watches Faux Noise, he might be one of those idiots who doesn't believe in germs, like that idiot host who says he hasn't washed his hands in 10 years.

        If he doesn't wash his hands, washing his mouth out with soap will just be another layer of hell for him.

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