Image Credit: Jugarum / CC & Montgomery County Election Commission.
Article by Olivia Lupia, Tennessee Conservative News –
In an exclusive interview with The Tennessee Conservative, Montgomery County Administrator of Elections Amanda Joslin detailed her discovery of a blatant attempt at voter fraud toward the end of early voting, how her team dedicated themselves to discovering the truth, and finding enough evidence to refer the case to the District Attorney.
While reconciling the end-of-day vote totals for Monday, Oct. 26, Joslin noticed a discrepancy in the number of voter applications processed compared to votes cast. In the department’s computer system, the end-of-day report showed one less person’s history than there were votes.
Joslin said that there have been instances where the computer has not recorded history correctly, so she went through all the day’s applications to see if the computer failed to mark someone off the list after an application was printed for them.
After Joslin’s initial look into the system did not reveal where the discrepancy came from, the elections staff then spent nearly the entirety of the following day manually combing through the 2,378 applications one-by-one and matching them to the list of those who cast a vote on Oct. 26 to find the error.
Toward the end of the stack, the team discovered it was not that the computer had failed to mark a voter off the list, but that there were two applications issued for a single voter. The forms showed signatures that were similar but still noticeably different, and the application numbers only had one sequential number in between, indicating that the forms were printed near simultaneously from two different registration stations.
“They were here at the same time. This couldn’t have been the same person,” Joslin said.
The Tennessee Conservative was able to examine the applications for visual confirmation, though photographs were not taken as the forms contained personal identifying information.
On suspicion that it was two different individuals using the same name and identification to vote, Joslin pulled security camera footage from around the time the applications were issued to identify the fraudulent voters.
She explained, “They tried to act like they weren’t together, but we could tell when they walked in, they kind of said a couple of things to each other. And then throughout their time in the line and the lobby, you could tell they were trying to make it look like they were not talking to each other, but they clearly were.”
After more digging, including thoroughly searching social media and futile attempts to contact the voters using the information provided on the applications, the team concluded that the voters appeared to be twin sisters, only one of whom is registered to vote, and the other sister used an old, expired ID of the registered sister.
“My thought is, [the registered sister] moved here from Memphis because her mailing address is a Memphis address. And you can do that, we have people that have their mailing address like if they’re snowbirds, sometimes they’ll change their mailing address to Florida, stuff like that. So that’s not really alarming for someone to have a different mailing address, but if she changed her ID and still has her old ID, then that could have been used by somebody else,” she said.
Joslin also noted that despite not being able to buy items like alcohol or cigarettes, an individual can vote using an expired ID, which is one reason the fraudsters were not immediately identified.
The tricky part now comes in trying to find the appropriate recourse. As ballots are anonymous, there is unfortunately no way to cancel the extra vote that was cast by the fraudulent sister.
“At this point, it’s done and we have an extra vote that we don’t have history for. I can account that it wasn’t the same person twice, there were two different people, but it’s not like I can’t count it,” Joslin lamented.
But Joslin’s office will be turning all the evidence over to the District Attorney who will examine it and decide whether to pursue prosecution. She thinks the matter will likely have to go before a grand jury, where she might be called upon to recount the details of the incident. “And then after that it’s kind of out of my hands as to what happens with it,” she said.
When asked why it was important to her to spend so much time investigating what initially looked like a simple computer error, Joslin said, “I want to be able to account for every single vote that walks through the door or that’s on the machine, I want to know exactly what happened. I wasn’t gonna sleep until I knew exactly what happened.”
“Even if we find mistakes, they’re gonna happen, it’s inevitable, but at least I can explain what happened with a mistake, and this is what we can do to correct a mistake. Sure there are mistakes, but there needs to be a recourse for how you’re going to correct it in the future. I want people to be able to trust the process, that’s very important.”
She also emphasized that she does not place any blame for the incident on the registration or poll workers as, “There’s a lot of training that goes into the poll workers and everything, but there’s still human error. You can’t get away from human error when it’s fast-paced, especially if you’re really busy. And that’s why we told them on the front counter to slow down, to pay closer attention, to look at the IDs as best as you can with a face, not just take the ID and never look up at the person.”
Montgomery County experienced a nearly 70% surge in early voting turnout compared to 2022, according to the Secretary of State’s Division of Elections.
Tennesseans cast 1,280,642 ballots during the 14-day early voting period, a 45% overall increase from the 2022 midterms, though that number is roughly 7% lower than the 2018 turnout.
Election Day is Tuesday, November 3.
Sources:
Montgomery County Administrator of Elections Amanda Joslin.
About the Author: Olivia Lupia is a political refugee from Colorado who now calls Tennessee home. A proud follower of Christ, she views all political happenings through a Biblical lens and aims to utilize her knowledge and experience to educate and equip others. Olivia is an outspoken conservative who has run for local office, managed campaigns, and been highly involved with state & local GOPs, state legislatures, and other grassroots organizations and movements. Olivia can be reached at olivia@tennesseeconservativenews.com.
