Republicans insist there’s voting fraud, and even though our elections are generally secure, it’s hard to argue with them — because they keep committing it.
Today’s story comes from Rensselaer County, New York (see map here), which includes the city of Troy, and politically leans Republican but has been shifting toward majority-Democratic (details here).
CNN reports (here), “Jason Schofield, the Republican Board of Elections commissioner of Rensselaer County, was arraigned Tuesday on an indictment charging him with unlawfully using the names and dates of birth of voters to fraudulently apply for absentee ballots for 2021 elections in his county, prosecutors said.”
At this point Schofield (photo, left) is only charged, and his attorney insists he’s innocent. Prosecutors have yet to prove the allegations in court.
So I’ll speak of an alleged scheme. It was fairly simple. Schofield is accused of using voter information to apply for absentee ballots between May through October 2021 for voters who didn’t request ballots (and weren’t interested in voting) without their knowledge, then received those ballots and in at least four cases had the voters sign them without filling them out.
News reports from CNN and other sources (e.g., here) indicate the ballots were actually voted in the 2021 primary and/or general election (presumably for Republican candidates).
Schofield apparently acted alone and on his own; there’s no evidence of an organized conspiracy to obtain blank ballots under false pretenses.
On the surface, it makes no sense. Schofield risked up to 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine to cast a handful of votes unlikely to change any election outcome. Why? Well, since he hasn’t clued me in, I can only try to peer into his head, drawing on what I know about human nature.
I’d guess two things are going on here. One, he’s frustrated that his home turf is trending blue; nobody likes change. Two, he probably believes — wrongly, but that doesn’t matter — that “everybody does it,” so he’s just leveling the playing field to make it fair by stealing votes to offset (imaginary) votes stolen by the other side.
I’ll make this prediction: If he’s found guilty and faces a judge for sentencing, he’s going to say he’s very, very sorry.
They always are when they get caught and have to face the music.