Elizabeth Bartman voted for President Trump in the 2020 election, but there was one problem: She'd been dead since 2008. Now, her son has been sentenced to five years of probation after he confessed to securing an absentee ballot in his mom's name and casting it. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that 70-year-old Bruce Bartman of Delaware County, Pa., was sentenced Friday after pleading guilty to two counts of perjury and one count of unlawful voting. Prosecutors say that on Aug. 20 of last year, Bartman filled out online voter registration forms for both his mother and his mother-in-law, who'd died in 2019, registering both as Republicans, per the Washington Post. In October, Bartman then requested an absentee ballot for his mother, which he turned in by the end of the month with a vote cast for the incumbent Trump, per prosecutors.
He ended up never asking for an absentee ballot for his deceased mother-in-law. His mother's registration was eventually flagged by Pennsylvania's system, noting her as deceased, which is what eventually led investigators to uncover what had transpired. On Friday, Bartman told Common Pleas Court Judge George Pagano that his "isolation" during the pandemic shutdowns led to his actions. "I listened to too much propaganda and made a stupid mistake," he said, per the AP. Pagano, for his part, said what Bartman did "goes to the heart of our democracy," but he also lauded him for taking responsibility for his crime. Bartman not only received probation, but he's now barred from voting for the next four years, and he can no longer serve on a jury. The Inquirer notes he's one of three Pennsylvania men who've been accused of voter fraud in favor of Trump during the last election. The other men's criminal cases are pending. (More voter fraud stories.)
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