A Pennsylvania district attorney said that two women are slated to face voter fraud charges in separate incidents, with both trying to cast ballots on behalf of their deceased mothers during the November 2020 election.
Authorities in Bucks County said the two women filled out mail-in ballots with the names of their dead mothers.
District Attorney Matthew Weintraub told news outlets that the incidents are isolated and said there was no evidence of “widespread or systematic election fraud here in Bucks County.”
“In each of these cases, the system caught the fraud first, as it was designed to do,” he said in a statement last week.
Danielle Elaine Dooner, 56, of Buckingham, and Melissa Ann Fisher, 51, of Quakertown, will be charged in relation to the alleged mail-in ballot violations. They each face violations of provisions relating to absentee and mail-in ballots, a misdemeanor of the third degree, officials said.
Dooner completed an application in late September or early October 2020 for her mother, who died on Sept. 29, 2020, according to Weintraub. Fisher signed the declaration on the ballot claiming to be her mother last year, his office said, adding that her mother died on Sept. 21, 2020.
The district attorney’s office said that it doesn’t know the party registrations of either woman and did not know for which candidate they voted for. Neither of the allegedly fraudulent ballots were opened and counted, Weintraub added.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Fisher was registered as a Democrat, and Dooner was registered as a Republican.
“It was not anything intentional,” Fisher told the paper.
