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- cross-posted to:
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A man who attempted to vote twice in Virginia’s 2023 election was acquitted of attempted illegal voting on Monday, following his claims in court that he had been testing the system for voter fraud.
A Nelson County jury found 67-year-old Richardson Carter Bell Jr. not guilty of attempting to vote more than once in the same election. According to the Washington Post, Bell, a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump, admitted voting early at his local registrar’s office only to also show up at a nearby polling place on Election Day.
Except he didn’t vote twice. He got in line to do it. He was turned away. From there he could try to say he never actually intended to vote again and would have not filled out another ballot and submitted it.
The drink driving analogy to this is walking to your vehicle while drunk with your keys in your hand. Or sitting in your vehicle. In many states and jurisdictions if you are sitting in the car even without keys or actual intent to drive you can be convicted of “DUI”.
Charge: “Attempted voter fraud”
That says nothing about voting twice, it says attempting.
He showed up tried to vote, got denied, lied to the police saying that it wasn’t him, and then when he showed up to court obviously has to admit he did attempt to do so, but only did so because he was testing the system.
What part did I miss?
I’d say we can look up what the actual charge is listed as for that state, but honestly I think we might be better off not searching things about such right now.
Had you read the actual statute you’d have found “voter fraud” to be the actual act of voting twice. In another section the modifier attempted is defined as basically attempting a crime defined elsewhere. So you can complain about justice not being served all you want, but the jury was not convinced he would have voted twice. You can say you’d have convicted him even, but you weren’t on the jury. I’m not arguing whether he should or shouldn’t have been convicted. The original question that prompted this chain was how he wasn’t convicted. I was providing a simple explanation as to why. Accept it or not. The part you missed was the part you explicitly said you didn’t look into. The actual law on this issue.