Social media users have claimed that an Indiana woman was arrested after being caught delivering 400 ballots pre-marked for “the Democratic candidate.” The claim is misleading: The incident happened in 2020 and involved absentee ballot applications, not ballots themselves.
One prominent X account with more than 300,000 followers on Tuesday tweeted out an image that included a news alert about a woman, Janet Reed, being arrested. “Democrats Cheat,” the image is captioned. “Indiana woman Arrested for delivering 400 ballots with democratic candidate pre-marked!!! I mean, what could go wrong with this mail in ballot stuff???”
John Corley, a self-proclaimed “Crusader for Truth,” responded to the tweet. “They’re getting caught in Real Time Cheating,” he tweeted. “The Cheating is being exposed [thanks] to Elon Musk & X.”
Reed pleaded guilty in May 2020 to sending applications for absentee-voter ballots for the state’s primary elections that were pre-marked for the Democratic Party ballot. Indiana has open primaries—meaning voters of any political affiliation can vote in either party’s primary elections— so the application includes a section where prospective voters select which party’s primary ballot they wish to receive. However, Reed decided to mail residents the ballot application forms with that section already filled out, pre-selected to receive a Democratic primary ballot. Reed also included instructions to prospective voters that the primary selection section “needs no further input.”
Local election officials and the Vanderburgh County Democratic Party asked Reed to stop delivering the pre-marked ballot applications, and warned that her actions were likely illegal. Even after those warnings, Reed continued to send out the applications. Following an investigation by the Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office and her eventual indictment, Reed was sentenced in June 2020 to serve 18 months probation.
According to the Associated Press, Reed was working for E. Thomasina Marsili, a 2020 Democratic candidate for Indiana’s 8th Congressional District, at the time of her actions. While Marsili went on to win the primary election, she lost in the general election to GOP Rep. Larry Buschon. The Vanderburgh County Election Board Office said in a statement to the Evansville Courier & Press at the time that they “received and rejected over 400 of the pre-marked applications.”
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