Woman pleads guilty to voting twice for Donald Trump
An Iowa woman charged with voting twice for Donald Trump last fall has pleaded guilty to election misconduct.
Court records show Terri Lynn Rote entered a plea on 27 June to the felony charge and a district court judge in Des Moines accepted the plea. Sentencing is set for 15 August.
Rote, who is 56 and lives in Des Moines, told police she turned in two absentee ballots before the November election because she believed Trump's unsubstantiated claims that the election was rigged and that her first ballot would be changed to a vote for Hillary Clinton.
She was arrested on 21 October at a satellite voting station in Des Moines attempting to vote the second ballot.
Rote hadn’t planned on voting twice but said it was “a spur-of-the-moment thing” when she walked by the satellite voting location, she told The Washington Post after she was charged.
“I don’t know what came over me,” she said.
She added she has been a supporter of Donald Trump since early in his campaign, after Republican candidate Mike Huckabee dropped out of the primary race.
Court documents show attorneys are recommending two years of probation and community service.
In addition to Rote, the Polk County Auditor’s Office reported two other people to police on suspicions of voter fraud, the Des Moines Register reported.
In the other two cases, those people cast mail-in ballots and also voted in person at one of the state’s early-voting locations, according to the paper.
