Six accused of voter fraud
CHEYENNE -- Six local residents are accused of illegally voting during the 2012 election.
The Laramie County Sheriff's Department arrested them this week on voter fraud charges.
Those arrested were: Jessie Banks, 50; Jeanne Joelson, 73; Anita Lafond, 46; Scott Leyo, 39; Joann Gabriel, 51; and Emmanuel Rhodes, 47.
Laramie County District Attorney Scott Homar said the six are suspected of breaking the state law that prohibits most convicted felons from voting.
“Under the (voter) registration form, there is a paragraph near the signature that states you are not a felon,” he said. “Those individuals signed that, allegedly.”
False swearing on an oath required by the election code is a felony offense punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of $10,000.
Wyoming has one of the country’s strictest felon voting laws.
Non-violent felons have to wait five years after they have completed their sentences to apply to the Wyoming Board of Parole to have their voting rights restored. And violent felons are permanently banned from voting.
But voter fraud cases have been rare in the state and even rarer locally. Homar said this is the first such case that he has prosecuted since he was elected in 2006.
Laramie County Clerk Debbye Lathrop said the revelations came about after her staff crosschecked the 2012 voter list with the Wyoming Department of Criminal Investigation’s database.
She said her staff has to manually enter the names of people who voted using same-day registration to check their eligibility status. That process took weeks after the election occurred.
She guessed it took so long for the cases to then move through the system because law enforcement has higher priorities to pursue on daily basis.
If the individuals are convicted, 2012’s vote totals will not change. Lathrop said there would be no way to nullify someone’s vote if it is proven that they voted illegally.
“We would have no idea of which votes to go through since that is the concept of a secret ballot,” she said. “The only thing we can do is to flag those names.”
She added that these types of cases would not have been prevented by some of the voter ID laws that Wyoming has considered and other states have adopted.
Those proposals require voters to show valid identification at the polls. But it would have no bearing on checking if someone is a felon.
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