A Florida woman was arrested Monday for voter fraud in a local school board election. Seventy-two year old registered Republican Joan Halstead was running for the Sumpter County, FL, school board, but withdrew before the election. Law enforcement charged her with fraud for casting more than one ballot in the election, booked her and released her on $2,000 bond. As the linked article put it, "Her social media activity suggests she is a supporter of former President Donald Trump." You can bet if she cared that much about a school board election, she was likely up to the same trick in November 2020.
Local governments, from school boards to county election officials, are the targets of right-wing political agitation, with racist dog-whistle "critical race theory" claims and book banning the weapons used to inflame their low-information base voters into harassing local officials. Trumpists like Ms. Halstead aren't shy about committing election fraud on her small scale to advance their agenda, any more than Republican state legislatures are about tilting the playing field through gerrymandering and voter suppression on a statewide scale.
(photo: The Trumpist granny gangster. Villages-News.com)
