Sheriff: Manatee County man charged with voter fraud after requesting ballot for dead wife

A Manatee County man was arrested Thursday and charged with a third-degree felony after he requested a mail ballot for his dead wife because he was “testing the system to see if it worked,” the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office reports.

The voter fraud case comes amid heightened national concerns about the issue, which President Donald Trump repeatedly has highlighted, but Manatee County’s top elections official says such fraud is extremely rare.

The Sheriff’s Office began investigating Larry Wiggins, 62, in September after being notified by Manatee County Supervisor of Elections Mike Bennett of the suspicious ballot request.

Bennett said his staff discovered the fraud during a routine check of the voter roll that is done whenever someone requests a mail ballot. The voter database is constantly being updated, including with information from the state Department of Health on voters who die, Bennett said.

“As soon as they pulled up the file it showed that she is dead,” Bennett said.

The supervisor’s office then compared the handwriting on the absentee ballot request for Wiggins’s wife with her signature on file and discovered that they did not match.

Deputies were alerted on Sept. 17 and later interviewed Wiggins. The registered Democrat told them he was “testing the system.”

“He wanted to test the system,” Bennett said. “He did test the system, and guess what? It worked.”

Bennett, a Republican, emphasized that he will prosecute voter fraud to the full extent of the law, but also that such fraud is rare and that voters can have confidence in the election system. This is the first case of voter fraud Bennett has come across in Manatee County since he took over as the top elections official in 2012.

“The amount of fraud committed in Florida in elections is very small,” Bennett said. “People complain that vote by mail is crooked; it’s not, we catch them, we verify it and any supervisor of elections in the state of Florida I know is just as conscious about it as I am.”

Regardless, the incident is likely to stoke fears of widespread vote-by-mail fraud, something President Donald Trump has been warning about as states expand mail voting because of health concerns during the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump and many of his supporters argue that mail ballots are rife with fraud. Experts say that it is easier to commit fraud using mail ballots, but that such fraud is not common or widespread.

“The amount of fraud is very, very small ... people who think there’s a lot of fraud are seriously mistaken,” Bennett said.

Floridians should feel confident in the elections process, he added.

“The thing we’re pushing is we want people to know no matter what county you’re in, in Florida every supervisor in Florida is dedicated to make sure we have fair and honest elections,” Bennett said.

Wiggins was released from jail Friday on $1,500 bail.