另一项选民欺诈指控在共和党人面前爆发

The mysterious case of Rosemarie Hartle's vote in the last presidential election, three years after her death, was trumpeted in November 2020 by the Nevada Republican Party and various prominent conservatives. From then-President Donald Trump on down, Republicans used stories about phony votes cast under the names of dead people as key evidence for their claim that Joe Biden's victory was marred by major fraud.

The Hartle mystery is now solved. And it turns out that the fraud was committed by a Republican.

Hartle was married to Las Vegas businessman Donald Kirk Hartle, a registered Republican. In November 2020, Hartle told Las Vegas television station 8 News Now (KLAS-TV) that he felt "disbelief" when he found out that a mail-in ballot was submitted in his late wife's name. It was "pretty sickening," he said at the time, adding that he didn't know how it could've happened.

But Hartle had actually cast the phony ballot himself.

On Tuesday, Hartle pleaded guilty to the crime of voting more than once in the same election. The judge, 8 News Now reported, said Hartle had pulled what seemed like a "cheap political stunt that kind of backfired and shows that our voting system actually works because you were ultimately caught."

Indeed. And it isn't the first time something like this has happened.

In November 2020, the Trump campaign highlighted a case in which a ballot was cast in the name of a long-dead Pennsylvania woman. Her son later pleaded guilty to casting that ballot for Trump, saying, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, he had "listened to too much propaganda and made a stupid mistake."

False or overstated claims

So there is a smattering of confirmed cases in which ballots were indeed illegally cast in the names of dead people, and we might perhaps learn of some more cases over time. Early this year, Nevada's secretary of state referred 10 "questionable" cases to law enforcement for investigation.

But Trump's vague assertions that thousands of ballots were cast in the names of dead people in various key states were entirely baseless; his massive numbers were plain fictional. Some specific ballots the Trump campaign claimed were fraudulent, meanwhile, were quickly proven to be legitimate ballots cast by living people with the same or similar names as dead people.

And Republican voters were responsible for some of the small number of known crimes.

A Republican local official was the perpetrator of one Ohio case, admitting to forging a signature to cast a ballot under the name of his recently deceased father; he told NBC News it was an "honest error" and also that he had simply been "trying to execute a dying man's wishes."

In Colorado, a man who was charged in 2021 with murdering his wife, who had disappeared in May 2020, was also charged with illegally casting her ballot, for Trump, in the November election. He allegedly told FBI agents that he submitted the ballot because he thought "all these other guys are cheating" and his wife would have voted for Trump anyway.

In some of the confirmed cases, including Hartle's, it is not publicly known which presidential candidate the illegal vote was cast for. Regardless, there is no sign that the crime of voting under the name of a dead person happened even close to frequently enough to have swung any state to Biden, that this crime was committed overwhelmingly by Biden voters, or that the crime is generally going unnoticed by the authorities.

"No one claims that voter fraud never occurs. Multiple studies have examined the frequency of voting fraud, and it is extremely rare," said Paul Gronke, a political science professor and director of the Elections & Voting Information Center at Reed College. "Voter impersonation fraud particular, which is what Mr. Hartle did when he forged his wife's name, is even rarer." Gronke said that, while fraudulent voters can occasionally slip through verification systems if they are willing to commit a felony like Hartle did, "nothing in this case is evidence that voting fraud is happening at a level that changes election outcomes."

The Nevada Republican Party did not respond to a CNN request for comment about how it had drawn attention to the Hartle case in 2020.

Which is unsurprising. When it comes to voter fraud, some Trump allies have taken a distinctly Trumpian approach: throw sensational claims into the public realm before the actual facts are known -- and if inconvenient actual facts eventually emerge, just quietly move on to the next sensational claim, confident that the truth will never reach a good chunk of the Republican base.

另一项选民欺诈指控在共和党人面前爆发

罗斯玛丽·哈特尔 (Rosemarie Hartle) 在她去世三年后的上一届总统大选中投票的神秘案例于 2020 年 11 月被内华达州共和党和各种著名的保守派大肆宣传。从当时的总统唐纳德特朗普开始，共和党人使用以死者的名义投下的虚假选票的故事作为他们声称乔拜登的胜利受到重大欺诈损害的关键证据。

哈特尔之谜现已解开。事实证明，欺诈是由共和党人实施的。

哈特尔嫁给了拉斯维加斯商人唐纳德·柯克·哈特尔（Donald Kirk Hartle），后者是一名注册共和党人。 2020 年 11 月，哈特尔告诉拉斯维加斯电视台 8 News Now (KLAS-TV)，当他发现以他已故妻子的名义提交了邮寄选票时，他感到“难以置信”。他当时说，这“非常令人作呕”，并补充说他不知道这是怎么发生的。

但实际上是哈特尔亲自投了假票。

周二，哈特尔承认在同一次选举中多次投票的罪行。据 8 News Now 报道，法官表示，哈特尔采取了看似“廉价的政治噱头，结果适得其反，并表明我们的投票制度确实有效，因为你最终被抓住了。”

的确。而且这样的事情已经不是第一次发生了。

2020 年 11 月，特朗普竞选团队强调了一起以宾夕法尼亚州一位死去已久的妇女的名义进行投票的案例。她的儿子后来承认为特朗普投票，据费城问询报称，他“听了太多宣传，犯了一个愚蠢的错误”。

虚假或夸大的声明

因此，确实存在以死者的名义非法投票的确诊案例，随着时间的推移，我们可能会了解更多案例。今年年初，内华达州的国务卿将 10 起“可疑”案件提交执法部门进行调查。

但特朗普含糊地断言，数以千计的选票是在各个关键州以死者的名义投的，这完全是毫无根据的。他的庞大数字纯属虚构。特朗普竞选团队声称的某些特定选票是欺诈性的，但很快被证明是由与死者同名或相似名字的活着的人投出的合法选票。

共和党选民应对少数已知犯罪负责。

一名共和党地方官员是俄亥俄州一起案件的肇事者，承认伪造签名以他最近去世的父亲的名义投票；他告诉 NBC 新闻，这是一个“诚实的错误”，而且他只是“试图执行垂死之人的愿望”。

在科罗拉多州，一名男子于 2021 年被指控谋杀了他于 2020 年 5 月失踪的妻子，他还被指控在 11 月的选举中非法为特朗普投票。据称，他告诉联邦调查局特工，他提交选票是因为他认为“所有其他人都在作弊”，而他的妻子无论如何都会投票给特朗普。

在包括哈特尔在内的一些确诊病例中，不公开知道非法投票投给了哪位总统候选人。无论如何，没有迹象表明以死者的名义投票的犯罪发生的频率甚至足以让任何州转向拜登，也没有迹象表明这种犯罪是拜登选民以压倒性多数犯下的，或者这种犯罪行为普遍被忽视由当局。

里德学院政治学教授兼选举与投票信息中心主任保罗格隆克说：“没有人声称从未发生过选民欺诈。多项研究调查了投票欺诈的频率，这种情况极为罕见。” “特别是选民假冒欺诈，这就是哈特尔先生伪造妻子姓名时所做的，更是罕见。”格隆克说，虽然欺诈性选民如果愿意像哈特尔那样犯下重罪，偶尔可以通过验证系统，“在这种情况下，没有任何证据表明投票欺诈发生在改变选举结果的程度。”

内华达州共和党没有回应 CNN 就其如何在 2020 年引起人们对哈特尔案的关注而置评的请求。

这不足为奇。当谈到选民欺诈时，特朗普的一些盟友采取了明显的特朗普式方法：在知道实际事实之前将耸人听闻的主张扔到公共领域——如果最终出现不便的事实，就悄悄地转向下一个耸人听闻的主张，相信真相永远不会到达共和党基础的很大一部分。