Judge orders woman who cast dead mother’s ballot in 2024 to write essay

A Minnesota woman convicted of filling out and submitting a mail-in ballot for her deceased mother in support of Republican Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential election was ordered by a judge to write an essay and read a book about voting’s importance to democracy.

Trump, who won a second term last year, has railed against mail-in voting as fraudulent and falsely claimed it as one reason he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden. Itasca County Attorney Jake Fauchald said the Minnesota case shows how well the election system works and catches attempted voter fraud.

Danielle Christine Miller, 51, of Nashwauk, in a rural area about three hours north of Minneapolis, was charged last fall with three felonies after local election officials notified authorities in October about two absentee ballots that had been flagged for fraud. One of those was from a registered voter who had died, Miller’s mother.

According to court papers, Miller told an investigator that she had filled out her mother’s absentee ballot and signed her mother’s name on its signature envelope. She said her mother was an avid Trump supporter and wanted to vote for him, but she died in August 2024 before receiving an absentee ballot, according to the complaint. Miller also said she signed her mother’s signature as a witness on her own ballot, the document said.

Miller pleaded guilty last week to intentionally making or signing a false certificate. As part her plea, she claimed she was intoxicated when submitting the mail ballots and was unable to precisely remember what she did, but agreed that the evidence could find her guilty, Fauchald said. A message left for Miller’s attorney was not immediately returned.

Minnesota Ninth Judicial District Judge Heidi Chandler on Wednesday dismissed the other two charges. Miller’s sentence includes up to three years of supervised probation and an $885 fine.

The judge also imposed some other unorthodox conditions.

Miller must read a book about the history of voting in America and current related issues, “Thank You for Voting: The Maddening, Enlightening, Inspiring Truth About Voting in America,” by Erin Geiger Smith; and she was ordered to write a 10-page paper “regarding the importance in voting in a democracy and how election fraud can undermine the voting process.”

Fauchald said the sentence is a fair outcome. He called the paper a unique aspect of sentencing, but a fair expectation.

“I think the sentence that was imposed here is very much designed to help her better understand the importance of those things and make sure that she doesn’t — and quite frankly other people don’t — take the same type of actions in the future,” the prosecutor said.