A man in Florida has been arrested and charged with a felony after he allegedly requested a mail-in ballot for his wife, who died in 2018, while claiming to be testing the system, Fox News reports.
Sarasota resident Larry Wiggins, 62, told WFLA-TV in Tampa: “I heard so much about ballots being sent in and people just having found them in different places. I feel like I haven’t done anything wrong.”
However, Manatee Supervisor of Elections Mike Bennett claims that his staff discovered during a routine check that his wife, Ursula Wiggins, requested a mail-in ballot despite having died in 2018. The staff also found notable discrepancies in the handwriting on the ballot request form when compared to the signature they had on file.
Wiggins, who describes himself as a Democrat who supports President Donald Trump, acknowledged sending the application, but denied trying to impersonate his late wife’s signature, saying, “I said well, 'Let me just send it in and see what’s going to happen to see if they’re actually going to send a ballot for her to vote.'”
Bennett told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune: “He wanted to test the system. He did test the system, and guess what? It worked.”
He added, “The amount of fraud committed in Florida in elections is very small. People complain that vote by mail is crooked; it’s not, we catch them, we verify it and any supervisor of elections in the state of Florida I know is just as conscious about it as I am.”
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.