The District of Columbia Board of Elections penalized Vanessa Rubio, a Washington, D.C., advisory neighborhood commissioner, for casting two ballots in the 2020 presidential election.
Rubio cast ballots once in Maryland on November 1, 2020, and again in Washington, DC, on November 3, 2020, according to the Board of Elections.
“No individual shall vote more than once in any election,” says a DC statute, and the Board’s Office of General Counsel (OFG) found proof that Rubio voted twice. The OFG’s investigation into the DC and MD Board of Elections discovered all of the voter file data linked to Rubio.
During her August 31 pre-hearing session with the Board of Elections, Rubio said she voted in person in the District of Columbia but “could not remember” casting a ballot in Maryland. Officials then presented her with evidence of a digital photograph of her signed 2020 Maryland Voter Authority Card. While acknowledging her signature, Rubio said that “it is conceivable” she had cast her ballot in Maryland. The fact that you cannot vote in more than one state was “never truly mentioned,” she said.
According to the board’s ruling, Rubio was given until January 8, 2024, to pay a $500 civil fine. It was stated that five others were fined $100 for voting twice. Voter fraud seldom occurs when an individual unintentionally casts two ballots in an election.
Despite claims made by former president Trump, authorities have maintained that the number of actual instances of voter fraud in the 2020 election is statistically negligible.
The six D.C. voters who cast ballots in two separate elections also won’t make a difference. In Maryland, President Joe Biden received almost 1.98 million votes compared to Trump’s 976,000, and he also carried the district with over 300,000 votes. The DC Board of Elections is still looking into two more instances of multiple voting in the 2020 general election.