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Four St. Clair Shores voters who allegedly cast two separate ballots in the August primary are facing felony charges, a surprise to the voters who thought they were in the clear after the local prosecutor declined to press charges.
The alleged double voting was the result of voters casting both absentee and in-person ballots during the primary on Aug. 6. It was caught shortly afterward by voting officials and investigated by local police before Macomb County prosecutor Peter Lucido ultimately declined to prosecute.
But Attorney General Dana Nessel on Friday announced felony charges against those voters, as well as three St. Clair Shores assistant clerks, after her office conducted another investigation into the double votes.
When Lucido declined to prosecute in August, he said that police had determined the voters believed they had spoiled their absentee ballots. He said at the time that the voters likely hadn’t intended to commit a crime.
“This was cleared,” a surprised Frank Prezzato, one of the four alleged double voters, said Friday afternoon.
He added later that “this thing has really escalated” but declined to comment further.
Prezzato, along with fellow St. Clair Shores residents Stacey Kramer, Douglas Kempkins Jr., and Geneva O’Day, are accused of two separate felonies: one count of voting absentee and in person, and one count of offering to vote more than once. The combined maximum penalty for those violations is nine years in prison.
Three assistant clerks also face felony charges. Patricia Guciardo and Emily McClintock are both charged with the same felonies as the voters, as well as an additional count of falsifying election returns or records, which has a maximum sentence of five years. The third, Molly Brasure, faces two counts of falsifying election records and two counts each of voting absentee and in person, and offering to vote more than once.
In a press conference Friday morning, Nessel alleged that the four voters went to their polling place on Election Day and requested to vote, despite having already returned a ballot. The electronic poll book, the computer used for checking in voters, flagged to election workers that those voters had already cast a ballot, as it is designed to do to prevent double votes, but the assistant clerks told those workers to override the system, Nessel said.
Doing that required the clerks to “illegally alter the qualified voting file,” she said, referring to a database that contains records of who is eligible to vote and which ones have received or returned an absentee ballot.
“We have sufficient procedures in place, which is likely why it’s so rare this happens,” Nessel added. “For this to have occurred, it required multiple people in a concentrated area that were willing to break the law all on the same day during the course of a single election.”
All of the double votes were counted, she said, although they did not affect the outcomes of any races. More than 13,000 votes were cast in August in St. Clair Shores, a city of about 57,500 people.
Nessel has teamed closely with Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to make clear that elections in Michigan are fair and that the rules are not up for debate, they say. Friday’s charges are just one of the latest examples. Nessel has also threatened legal action against canvassers who didn’t initially certify results in Delta County (they ultimately did) and charged a former clerk after she allegedly used an electronic poll book to transmit non-public voter data. She has also gone after fake electors and unauthorized tabulator access offered to supporters of Donald Trump.
O’Day, one of the four voters charged, told Votebeat on Friday that she was told her initial ballot hadn’t been received. She said that she was at her polling place to check, and that the workers told her she could cast a ballot.
“He swore up and down that there was no absentee in the system for me,” she said.
She said she was confused by it but was reassured by the workers that there wasn’t an absentee ballot on file for her, so she opted to vote in person.
O’Day said it was an accident on her end.
“I’m 62 years old and never been in trouble in my life,” she said, adding that she was going to turn herself in. She ended the call with a Votebeat reporter at the advice of her attorney.
Kramer also hung up on a reporter. Kempkins could not be reached.
None of the assistant clerks could be reached by Votebeat on Friday.
Double voting is extremely rare across the country. Because there are so many safeguards in place, double voting typically happens when voters cast ballots in two separate states.
In Michigan, voting twice is nearly impossible, and documented instances of multiple votes cast by the same voter are exceedingly rare. The state conducted an audit in 2022 and found that over several elections, 99.99% of all ballots cast were not duplicates.
Typically, voters who try to cast two ballots are stopped in one of two ways. The first is that an electronic poll book would flag that a voter has already returned an absentee ballot. Voters who are recorded as having received absentee ballots must have those ballots voided before they can vote in person.
The second way is that if an absentee ballot is received after someone has voted in person, that ballot is supposed to be rejected. The election inspector would be notified as they processed the absentee ballot.
Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini told Votebeat in August that this was what happened in St. Clair Shores, but that workers overrode the system. He could not be reached Friday but said in August that workers would not be overriding the system in future elections.
In cases where a double vote does get through the system, it can be detected later, as it was in St. Clair Shores. Clerk Abby Barrett told Votebeat in August that her team found it in printed reports from the qualified voter file as well as in the paper trail for the ballots, which showed that voters had signed both their in-person ballot application form at their polling place and their absentee ballot.
Barrett could not be reached for comment Friday.
In a statement Friday, Benson said that anyone who tries to vote more than once in an election will be caught and charged.
“We will watch closely to see how the facts bear out in this case,” she said. “But anyone who thinks they can get away with voting fraud in Michigan should know we will not tolerate any attempt to interfere in our elections.”
Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.
