'Mistakes do happen': Trump supporting ex-IRS attorney voted in same election in 2 different states

Former President Donald Trump and some of his allies, from MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell to 2022 Arizona GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, continue to claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him through widespread voter fraud. But that conspiracy theory has been repeatedly debunked.

Widespread U.S. voter fraud is a MAGA myth. Occasionally, voter fraud does occur in the U.S., but not on a large scale. Rather, someone might try to vote twice and face prosecution for it. And when what happens on rare occasions, Democrats are by no means the only offenders.

In an Ohio courtroom on Wednesday, July 12, Trump supporter James Saunders — a 56-year-old former attorney for the IRS who is accused of voter fraud — appeared before Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Andrew Santoli. Public defender Scott Roger Hurley, who is representing Saunders, told Santoli that Saunders made an honest mistake when he voted in two separate states in the same election.

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Saunders cast a ballot in Cuyahoga County, Ohio as well as Broward County, Florida. Hurley told Santoli that "mistakes do happen," but prosecutor Andrew Rogalski countered that Saunders' defense would have been more believable if he had only done that once. Instead, Rogalski noted, Saunders voted twice in more than one election.

Rogalski, according to Cleveland.com, told the courtroom, "The fact that you do that in consecutive general elections, I think, takes 'accident' to the land of imaginary doubt, and not reasonable doubt."

Cleveland.com reporter Cory Shaffer notes, "Before the 2022 general election, Saunders voted by mail in Florida on November 2, 2022, and then voted in person at his precinct in Shaker Heights on November 8, 2022, the witnesses said."

Shaker Heights is a Cleveland suburb. A hearing in the case is scheduled for August 8, when Santoli will announce a decision.