An attorney from Shaker Heights was found guilty of two counts of election fraud for voting twice in the 2020 and 2022 general elections, according to the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office.
James Saunders, 56, was found guilty by a Cuyahoga County grand jury Tuesday, Prosecutor Michael C. O’Malley announced in the news release.
“Mr. Saunders is the poster child for voter fraud. He thought he could outsmart the system, but today’s verdict proves he was wrong,” O’Malley said. “Judge Santoli’s verdict and remanding of this defendant sends a stern message that voter fraud will not be tolerated.”
An investigation revealed that Saunders voted on Ohio and Florida ballots during the Nov. 3, 2020 general election, casting an early, in-person ballot in Cuyahoga County before casting an in-person ballot in Florida on the day of the election, the release states.
Further investigations revealed that during the Nov. 8, 2022 general election, Saunders cast a mail-in ballot in Florida and an in-person ballot while in Ohio. His signature was consistent and matched all previously registered ballots.
The investigation also revealed that he also voted twice in the 2014 and 2016 general elections, but those incidents could not be prosecuted due to the statute of limitations, the prosecutor’s office stated.
Saunders will be sentenced at the Cuyahoga County Justice Center on Monday, Aug. 28.
Election fraud is a fourth-degree felony in Ohio, according to the state's revised statutes, and is punishable by six to 18 months in prison.
According to the state records and federal elections filings, Saunders is a longtime Republican who has donated more than $3,000 over the past decade to GOP candidates and PACs, including Donald Trump.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose confirmed in April that Saunders was flagged by the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a leading national source for making sure citizens aren't voting in multiple states.
ERIC brought the case to the secretary's office, who referred it to the attorney general, who then referred it to Cuyahoga County, according to LaRose's team.
RELATED: Shaker Heights man indicted for 2020 voter fraud; Ohio has since left system that caught him
LaRose removed Ohio from the anti-voter fraud initiative in March for a few reasons, the secretary's former spokesperson Rob Nichols told News 5 in April.
"It was saddle-bagged by politics," Nichols said. "And as states continue to defect, the value to Ohio was dropping."
LaRose thought it was a crucial system for Ohio even one month before dropping it. In a press conference, he said, "It is one of the best fraud-fighting tools that we have when it comes to actually catching people that try to vote in multiple states."
But a month later, LaRose changed his tune, saying in an exit letter he decided to withdraw Ohio from ERIC because it "appears to favor only the interests of one political party.”
"It seems ironic that Ohio has pulled out of ERIC, [when] evidence developed by the ERIC system revealed an incident of voter fraud," said Case Western Reserve University law professor Atiba Ellis when the voter fraud allegations against Saunders first surfaced.
As of October 2022, LaRose sent 75 allegations of fraud during the 2020 election to law enforcement, which amounts to just .001% of all Ohio ballots. However, when News 5 asked his team how many of these claims have been substantiated, they said they did not know.
Watch our previous report on Saunders' indictment:
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