Dossier mode
Voting While Republican
The same investigation, restaged one beat at a time. Drive it with the arrow keys, space, or autoplay. Nothing is cut from the piece — long runs are split across frames. Read the full investigation or open the The Real Voter Fraud? hub.
Voting While Republican
When individual voter fraud actually gets prosecuted, a striking share of the cases are Trump supporters — several who cast a dead relative's ballot for Trump. One starred in a GOP ad claiming his dead wife's vote was stolen. He'd cast it himself.
The rare, real cases of prosecuted voter fraud keep turning out to be committed by the people shouting loudest about it.
Charged-or-convicted cases only. This is not a claim that Republicans commit mass fraud — fraud is rare on all sides. It is documented hypocrisy: the alarm is sounded by the side whose own supporters keep getting caught.
Bruce Bartman (Pennsylvania) pleaded guilty to casting his dead mother's 2020 ballot for Donald Trump.
Bartman, a registered Republican, fraudulently registered his deceased mother and used her name to cast a mail ballot for Trump in 2020. He pleaded guilty to two counts of perjury and one count of unlawful voting, and was sentenced to five years' probation and barred from voting for four years. He told the court he did it 'out of frustration' believing the election was rigged.
Donald 'Kirk' Hartle (Nevada) was featured in a GOP ad claiming his dead wife's ballot was stolen — prosecutors found he cast it himself.
Hartle, a Nevada Republican, publicly claimed someone had fraudulently voted his late wife's 2020 ballot, and the Nevada Republican Party amplified it as evidence of fraud. Investigators concluded Hartle himself cast the ballot. He pleaded guilty to a charge of voting more than once in the same election and was sentenced to a fine and probation. The single most self-refuting case in the fraud-panic canon: the 'proof' of stolen votes was the accuser's own crime.
Ralph Thurman (Pennsylvania) voted his own ballot, then returned in a disguise to cast a second vote as his son.
Thurman, a registered Republican, voted at his Chester County precinct, then came back in a hat and sunglasses to cast a second ballot using the name of his registered-Democrat son. Poll workers recognized him. He pleaded guilty to repeat voting and was sentenced to three years' probation.
Edward Snodgrass (Ohio), a Republican township trustee, forged his dead father's absentee ballot and voted twice.
Snodgrass, a Porter Township trustee in Delaware County, signed and submitted his deceased father's absentee ballot (mailed after his father had died) in addition to voting himself. He pleaded guilty to falsification and illegal voting, and was sentenced to three days in jail and a $500 fine. He characterized it as an 'honest error.'
What these cases do and do not show.
- DO show: when a rare, real case of individual in-person or ballot fraud is prosecuted, a conspicuous share involve Trump supporters — often casting a dead relative's vote FOR Trump, motivated by the belief the election was rigged.
- DO NOT show: that Republicans commit mass fraud. These are isolated cases, just as the rarity spoke establishes fraud is isolated on all sides. Mirror-imaging the panic would be the same error we're documenting.
- THE POINT is the hypocrisy of proportion: the movement that treats extremely rare fraud as a national emergency keeps supplying the actual, prosecuted culprits.
The alarm and the culprits.
This spoke sits directly on top of the rarity anchor: fraud is extremely rare (proven there), and when the rare real case surfaces it keeps being a Trump voter (proven here). Together they set up the rest of the hub — the decades-long campaign to restrict voting, and the 2025–26 apparatus being built — against a threat that barely exists and that its own loudest voices keep committing.
Help us fill these lines.
- OpenA systematic partisan breakdown of prosecuted individual-fraud cases nationally — the anecdotes here are documented, but a full audited tally would strengthen the pattern claim beyond illustration.
- OpenThe Mark Meadows North Carolina registration matter, left out here because the state Attorney General declined to charge — it would need an actual charge or finding to qualify under this hub's bar.