Editor’s note: This column was coauthored by Olivia Hodge, a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.

A woman votes in two different states for four elections in a row.  

A small-town mayor locks away ballots and refuses to count the votes.   

A mayoral candidate forges over 100 absentee ballot requests and sends them to a fake nursing home address.  

A husband and wife, both candidates for office, fake their residence in a warehouse to get inside the boundaries of a political district.  

And a campaign manager schemes to get his domestic partner on the ballot as a candidate for governor by forging voters’ signatures on a petition.  

We’re fans of classic Hollywood movie plots — double-crosses, shady backroom deals, and the kind of plot twists that would make Humphrey Bogart raise an eyebrow. Think “The Maltese Falcon” (1941), “Double Indemnity” (1944), or “To Catch a Thief” (1955). The golden age of cinema gave us plenty of crime and film noir stories, but even those screenwriters might balk at the election fraud plots playing out in real elections and courtrooms today.  

And now, with more than 1,600 proven cases logged in The Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database, the real drama is unfolding far from the big screen.  

Welcome to the world of election crime; less cinematic, but more consequential, especially in close elections when only a small number of votes decide the winner.  Even when such fraud is not enough to change the outcome, every fraudulent vote cast voids the vote of a legitimate voter and diminishes confidence in the system.  

Here are just a few of the new cases that have resulted in the Heritage Election Fraud Database — which contains just a sampling of proven instances of election fraud — reaching the 1,600 mark.  

Zul Mirza Mohamed 

Zul Mirza Mohamed turned his mayoral campaign into a ballot fraud operation, leading to 106 felony charges in Denton County, Texas. While running for mayor of Carrollton, Mohamed forged absentee ballot request applications for registered voters and had them sent to a phony nursing home — a P.O. box at a local mail store leased under a fictitious identity.  

When investigators executed a search warrant, they uncovered a setup that would make “The Sting” (1973) look clumsy: a fake Texas driver’s license, a bogus University of North Texas ID, a counterfeit insurance card, a phony notary stamp, and a box full of Dallas and Denton County ballot applications. Mohamed pleaded guilty to 25 criminal counts related to ballot return methods and 81 counts of fraudulent use of ballot-by-mail applications. He was sentenced to four years in prison and 10 years of probation. 

James Hoppe and Jessica Caswell 

James Hoppe and Jessica Caswell, a husband-and-wife duo from Missouri, decided that if they couldn’t win an election the honest way, they’d just bend the map. Both claimed residency inside a vacant warehouse located within the boundaries of the River Bend board of trustees district. They filed false registration documents, declared their candidacies, and ended up tied in the election, with Hoppe winning by tiebreaker. Both were charged with felonies for submitting false documentation, but they pleaded guilty to reduced misdemeanor charges. Hoppe was fined $1,310, and Caswell $1,300. 

James Devine 

James Devine, a campaign manager in New Jersey, tried to get his domestic partner, Lisa McCormick, on the 2021 Democratic primary ballot for governor by filing a petition with 1,948 fraudulent voter signatures. He was charged in Mercer County with multiple offenses, including tampering with public records and falsifying nomination petitions. As part of a plea deal, he admitted guilt to one third-degree offense related to nomination certificates in exchange for dismissal of the other charges. He was sentenced to two years of probation and fined $180, an unfortunate example of how light the “punishment” is in too many election crime cases. 

Michael “Ozzie” Myers 

Michael “Ozzie” Myers, a former U.S. congressman and ABSCAM bribery scandal alumnus, returned to the political scene not to legislate, but to stuff ballot boxes. Between 2014 and 2018, Myers orchestrated a multi-year ballot-stuffing scheme in Philadelphia, bribing election judges in the 39th Ward and other divisions to add fraudulent votes to the totals for Democratic candidates he either supported or represented as a political consultant. He was charged with over a dozen felonies, including conspiracy to illegally vote in a federal election, falsification of records, bribery, and deprivation of civil rights. Myers pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 30 months in prison, three years of supervised release, and fined $100,000. 

Arthur Sammy Heckman, Sr. 

Arthur Sammy Heckman, Sr., took election interference to a new level by canceling democracy altogether. After the mayor of Pilot Station, Alaska, passed away, Heckman was appointed to serve temporarily as the acting mayor until the next election in October 2022. But instead of stepping down, he locked the ballots from that election in a filing cabinet and refused to allow them to be counted. A year later, he refused to allow the 2023 election to take place at all.  

When concerned citizens and city council members reported his actions, the Alaska Office of Special Prosecutions launched an investigation. Heckman was indicted on eight felony charges and eight misdemeanors. He ultimately pleaded guilty to one felony count of unlawful interference with an election and received a sentence of 12 months’ incarceration that was suspended and five years of probation, meaning he wouldn’t spend a single day in jail for what he did. It’s yet more proof that election fraud is not treated seriously enough by those who are supposed to ensure that our election laws are followed and our votes are protected and respected. 

Cheryl-Ann Leslie 

Cheryl-Ann Leslie cast ballots in both Florida and Alaska during the 2020 federal and state elections, continuing a pattern that stretched back nearly a decade. She voted absentee in Alaska while voting in person in Florida, a scheme she had repeated in 2014, 2016, and 2018. She was charged in Palm Beach County with two felonies for casting multiple ballots. She pleaded guilty to both counts, was sentenced to one day of imprisonment per charge (time served), and ordered to pay $2,500 in court costs. 

Election fraud isn’t just the stuff of Hollywood scripts. It’s a real, documented threat to free and fair elections. With a sampling of 1,600 proven cases and hundreds more still being tracked that are in the initial stages of prosecution, The Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database is a resource for anyone who wants to know the facts.  

See for yourself. Browse the map. Search the names. See all the different types of fraud that are committed. The truth is there — in black and white. 

Republished from The Daily Signal.