A Shaker Heights attorney who donated to ex-President Donald Trump’s campaign was convicted Tuesday of election fraud for voting twice in the last two general elections.
Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Andrew Santoli ordered sheriff’s deputies to take James Saunders straight to county jail after finding the 56-year-old guilty of two counts of illegal voting, a fourth-degree felony.
Santoli held that Saunders cast ballots in both Ohio and Florida in the 2020 presidential election and the 2022 general election. The judge noted that voting records from both states show Saunders also illegally voted twice in the 2014 and 2016 general elections. Prosecutors could not charge him for those votes because the statute of limitations had passed….
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley said after the hearing that Saunders’ case is the only instance of a person actually voting twice in Cuyahoga County in several years.
“It appears [Saunders] felt he was smarter than the system,” O’Malley said. “He was wrong.”