Rare criminal charges brought in Georgia double-voting cases

Two men have been charged with felonies for voting twice in the 2022 election, the first known criminal prosecutions for Georgia voting fraud in recent years.

The indictments come with maximum prison sentences of 10 years, a departure from most election violations that typically result in fines and reprimands . Few cases of illegal voting have been proved after investigations of the 2020 election or since then.

Grand juries in Forsyth and Fannin counties this month indicted the defendants for casting in-person ballots in Georgia and voting again in other states — Arizona and Texas — during the November 2022 midterm elections.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger sought the prosecutions based on data generated by the voter accuracy organization ERIC , which identified these voters by matching election records across its 24 member states and the District of Columbia.

Credit: Steve Schaefer

“Any illegal vote undermines a citizen’s legal vote,” Raffensperger said. “One citizen, one vote — anyone who tries to run up the scoreboard will be prosecuted.”

Raffensperger referred the double-voting allegations to local district attorneys in January, leading to the charges this month. Normally, allegations of election irregularities are investigated by Raffensperger’s office and then handled as civil violations by the State Election Board.

“This is something brand new. In my time as a prosecutor, I don’t think we’ve ever had a case like this,” said Fannin County District Attorney Frank Wood. “Our job is to enforce and prosecute the laws on the books. ... We’ll treat it just like every other case.”

Voting twice in the same election is illegal, but double-voting is possible if someone registers to vote in two different states and then casts a ballot in both states.

One of the defendants, 75-year-old William Burns of Colleyville, Texas, said an election worker told him he was allowed to vote in Georgia as well as Texas after he bought a cabin in Fannin County in 2020. He said he was told he could vote in local elections in both locations as long as he only cast one ballot in national elections.

“We’re an elderly couple, we went in and asked questions, and we did exactly what the voting official told us to do,” Burns said. He voted in four Georgia elections from 2020 to 2022, according to state records. He declined to disclose his political affiliation.

Burns is facing felony charges for false registration, voting by an unqualified elector and repeat voting in the same election. If he’s found guilty, each charge comes with a sentence of one to 10 years imprisonment and a $100,000 maximum fine.

The second person accused of double-voting is 69-year-old Randall Bassett Sr. of Cumming, who allegedly voted in-person in Georgia on Nov. 1, 2022, and also returned an absentee ballot to Maricopa County, Arizona.

Bassett, who consistently voted in Republican primaries in Georgia since 1992, didn’t return phone messages seeking comment. He faces one count of repeat voting.

“In general, it is rare for us to encounter a person voting, or attempting to vote, more than once in an election,” said Forsyth County Election Director Mandi Smith. “If the same voter attempts to cast a ballot later during the same election, the voter’s record will indicate that a ballot has already been issued for the voter.”

The two prosecutions came from 17 cases of alleged double-voting that Raffensperger referred to prosecutors in nine counties. In other cases, prosecutors have said they’re still investigating or they lacked probable cause to bring charges.

Investigations of double-voting during the 2020 primary found far fewer cases than Raffensperger originally suspected.

After the 2020 primary, Raffensperger said that election records indicated about 1,000 voters voted twice by returning absentee ballots and also showing up at polling places on election day.

An investigation by his office later indicated that about 300 voters cast two ballots, almost always because voters weren’t sure their mailed ballots had been returned in time during the COVID-19 pandemic, or because poll workers made mistakes on Georgia’s new voting equipment.

Investigators also told the State Election Board this month that out of 395 cases of suspected repeat voting in 2020, just five of them were confirmed. The board referred three of those cases to the attorney general’s office, and the other two remain pending.

The rest were dismissed after investigators reviewed voters’ names, birth dates and other personal information to find that they only voted once.

“Once again, it shows how not having information — how having names and dates of birth — is insufficient to match individuals ,” said board member Sara Tindall Ghazal, a Democratic Party appointee.

In a separate election case earlier this year, a judge found that Brian K. Pritchard, who was the Georgia Republican Party’s first vice chairman, violated state election laws by voting nine times while serving probation for a felony check forgery sentence. Pritchard was fined $5,000 and reprimanded in the non-criminal case.

Other criminal allegations involving election-related offenses have been brought over the years, but few of them involved fraudulent votes.

Four people were charged in Fulton County along with former President Donald Trump for their involvement in copying Georgia’s voting software in Coffee County in early 2021. Two of them have pleaded guilty : pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell and bail bondsman Scott Hall.

In one previous criminal case, a candidate in a judicial race in Chattooga County, Carleton Vines, was accused of using “runners” to fill out voters’ absentee ballots for them and then deliver them to election offices in 2006. A jury was unable to reach a decision, and the case ended in a mistrial. Vines later agreed to pay a $15,000 fine from the State Election Board in 2010.

Former Acting State Election Board Chairman Matt Mashburn said the board usually only refers the most egregious cases to district attorneys for criminal prosecution.

“That was reserved for intentional acts that were very serious,” said Mashburn, a Republican and former poll watcher. “We handled a lot of cases through letters of instruction for things that were technically a crime, but a criminal prosecution would not benefit anybody, including the state.”

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