Mail carrier tampered with absentee ballot requests, West Virginia AG says
A West Virginia mail carrier has been charged with “attempting to defraud the residents of West Virginia of a fair election” after allegedly altering several absentee ballot requests, according to the state attorney general’s office.
Thomas Cooper, 47, is accused of tampering with eight ballot requests, swapping party affiliation on five of them from Democrat to Republican, the West Virginia AG’s office said in a statement.
“Manipulating one’s absentee ballot or application is not a laughing matter – it’s a federal offense,” AG Patrick Morrisey said. “We must protect the integrity of the ballot box, and this demonstrates the aggressive action we will take to do so.”
Officials said Cooper’s alleged actions were caught early and won’t have any impact on West Virginia’s elections, WDVM reported.
“Voting absentee makes it easy to vote, but increases opportunities for irregularities and fraud to occur,” Secretary of State Mac Warner said in the release. “If you see something, say something.”
Announcement of charges in the ballot fraud investigation comes during an ongoing, national debate regarding the reliability of mail-in voting.
The issue has come to the fore recently due to concerns that in-person voting may be unsafe amid the coronavirus pandemic and that many voters will opt to stay home, effectively sacrificing their vote to avoid possible infection, outlets report.
California is one of several states making moves to expand mail-in voting to allow residents to vote in upcoming primaries and general elections. But the state recently went a step further, announcing mail-in ballots would also be available for the presidential election in November, according to The Hill.
The Republican National Convention quickly filed a lawsuit against the state, and a host of conservative voices, including President Donald Trump, have come out against the move, arguing it will open the door for rampant voter fraud, outlets report.
“There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed,” Trump tweeted on Tuesday. “The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will get one. That will be followed up with professionals telling all of these people, many of whom have never even thought of voting before, how, and for whom, to vote. This will be a Rigged Election. No way!”
In a first, Twitter placed a notice at the bottom of the post, urging users to perform a fact-check. The link reads “Get the facts about mail-in ballots” and leads to several news articles that take Trump’s statement to task.
One such article by The Hill calls Trump’s claims “unsubstantiated and exaggerated.”
“While voting experts say there are higher levels of voter fraud in mail-in voting than in-person voting, they say that overall cases of voter fraud are rare,” the article says.
In a report by The Sacramento Bee, which is not listed through the Twitter fact-checking link, experts share a similar view.
Justin Levitt, an expert on election law and professor of law at LMU Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, says “the sort of mass conspiracy the president is talking about can’t happen undetected” because America’s voting system is too secure to allow it.
“Levitt looked at more than 1 billion ballots cast between 2000 and 2020. He found 45 credible instances of identity fraud of the sort ID rules are designed to stop,” The Sacramento Bee reported.