MONROE — An Illinois man with a second home in Green County committed voter fraud by voting in both states, a preliminary investigation found.
The man died last year at age 75 so no charges will be filed, but District Attorney Craig Nolen and the Green County Sheriff’s Office investigated the case after receiving a criminal referral of possible fraud from the Wisconsin Election Commission (WEC) in March.
The case was one of 43 instances of possible cross-state voter fraud in 19 Wisconsin counties in the 2018 general election, according to a WEC analysis of data received through the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC.
ERIC is a nonprofit corporation with 30 member states, plus the District of Columbia, with a mission “to improve the accuracy of America’s voter rolls and increase access to voter registration for all eligible citizens.” It was formed in 2012 with assistance from The Pew Charitable Trusts.
ERIC provided WEC “with potential matches of individuals that may have voted in Wisconsin and another ERIC member state at the same election,” according to a WEC document. WEC notes that the 43 referrals represent 0.002% of the roughly 2.7 million ballots cast in that election.
Over half of the cases involve suspected cross-state votes cast in Illinois, including the one case in Green County. No other cases were reported for Green County.
Nolen received a referral on the case in a letter dated March 4 from WEC Senior Election Specialist Nathan Judnic.
A Green County sheriff’s deputy got the assignment to investigate the case May 19 but closed it two days later after learning the voter had died of cancer one year ago. The Times is not identifying the man since he will not be charged.
According to the investigation, the voter lived in Northlake, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago, but kept a vacation trailer home along the Pecatonica River south of Browntown in the Town of Cadiz. He registered to vote in Illinois in April 1982 and in Wisconsin in November 2014.
The Town of Cadiz clerk verified for the deputy that the man presented her with a driver’s license when he registered.
Records reviewed by the deputy show the man apparently voted early in Illinois on Nov. 2, 2018, and in person on Nov. 6, 2018, at the Cadiz Town Hall.
“Both signatures appear very similar on both documents,” the deputy noted.
The deputy visited the man’s rural Browntown trailer and found it unoccupied and surrounded by weeds. The deputy called a phone number posted on the trailer and reached a family friend who said the man had died. When the family friend learned what the investigation was about, he said he didn’t know if the deceased man voted or not but if he did, “it would have been Republican.”
The deputy contacted the man’s daughter, and she confirmed the death and provided the deputy with her father’s death certificate, dated June 1, 2019.
Nolen said what he took away from the partial investigation into the case is that “it’s really easy” to double-vote. He said the man likely “saw the opportunity to vote twice” and took it.
Election fraud is a Class I felony, punishable by up to three and a half years in prison and a $10,000 fine. No charges of election fraud have been filed in the state circuit court system since March, according to court records.
Experts who study election fraud say it’s very rare. A 2017 academic study into double voting concluded that, assuming no errors in recordkeeping, 0.02% of the votes cast in 2012 were double votes. But, the researchers wrote, “measurement error could explain many of these apparent double votes.”
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, it is ultimately up to states, not the federal government, to oversee elections. There is no national voter registration list, only state registration lists.
“Since the U.S. has a very mobile population and voters rarely inform election officials when they move, voters can often be on the voter rolls in two (or more) different states at one time,” the organization explains on its webpage about double voting.
“Unless states have an efficient way of communicating with one another, it’s possible that they may not be able to identify an individual who is on the rolls in two different states. ... Even if states share data and conduct checks with postal lists, though, it can be difficult to identify perfect matches and the number of so-called duplicate voters may be inflated.”