Woman In Trouble For Registering Her Dog To Vote
Duncan M. MacDonald is registered to vote. But he’s not your typical voter. He’s a dog.
Jane Balogh, a woman from Washington state, registered her dog, Duncan, to prove that it’s too easy for non-citizens to vote. She put Duncan’s name on her phone bill and she used the phone bill as identification to register him as a voter.
Duncan’s absentee ballot envelope was signed with a picture of a paw print.
“You can’t sign with a paw print,” the election worker told Balogh on Nov. 9.
“I said, ‘he can if he’s a dog,’ ” answered Balogh, a 66-year-old grandmother and Army veteran who lives in Federal Way.
The election worker told her a supervisor would call, but she never heard from anyone.
Balogh’s crime was signing Duncan’s name on a registration card under a declaration that he meets all the requirements to vote. She submitted ballots in his name in the September and November 2006 and May 2007 elections. She wrote “VOID” on the ballots, and didn’t cast any votes.
More on the case after the jump.
From SeattleTimes.com:
Balogh will be arraigned in court on a misdemeanor charge of making a false statement to a public official. She is not planning to contest the misdemeanor.
“I’m not going to claim to be innocent when I know I’m guilty. I wasn’t trying to do anything fraudulent. I was trying to prove that our system is flawed. So I got myself in trouble,” she says.
If she accepts the plea deal, Balogh will be sentenced to 10 hours of community service, $250 fine, and commit no other crimes for a year.
June 25th, 2007 at 7:09 am
[…] Woman Registered Her Dog To Vote - when I write about animal rights, this isn’t what I mean ;) […]
June 25th, 2007 at 9:09 am
That’s pretty funny, actually. Sounds like she proved her point.
June 25th, 2007 at 11:31 am
What’s wrong with that? In the Chicago Area, many of the residents of cemeteries are registered voters that repeatedly vote in local elections with no problems whatsoever?
June 25th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
That dog might make a better choice when voting than alot of people I know!
September 7th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
[…] a Washington state resident, registered Duncan, an Australian shepherd-terrier, to vote by putting his name on a phone bill. This was used as identification to register him as a voter. […]