RPCV (Honduras & PC/W Staff) indicted on voter fraud charges
Sir, I do not agree with voter fraud as you do. She did not try to vote in other states…
Mary Kate Lowndes, RPCV (Honduras 1989–91) and member of Peace Corps staff in Washington, has been indicted on one felony and three misdemeanor voter fraud charges
CONCORD, NH — A Washington, D.C., woman has been indicted on four voter fraud charges after being accused of wrongfully registering to vote in New Hampshire in 2016 and voting during the 2018 general election, according to the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office.
Mary Kate Lowndes, 57, was indicted on a felony wrongful voting charge, two counts of misdemeanor wrongful voting, and a single count of misusing an absentee ballot.
According to prosecutors, Lowndes filed a voter registration form in 2016 claiming to be domiciled at a shopping center on Crystal Avenue in Derry when she actually lived outside of New Hampshire, a misdemeanor charge. Investigators accused her of requesting and receiving an absentee ballot in the Nov. 6, 2018, general election and then casting that ballot. Those accusations constitute a felony and two misdemeanor charges, the state said Friday, due to “knowingly (submitting) a voter registration form containing false material information regarding her qualifications as a voter, and also for a person to make a false material statement regarding her qualifications as a voter when obtaining an official ballot.”
The indictment was handed down by the state’s Multicounty Grand Jury on Sept. 18. An arraignment date has not been set.
Lowndes faces six to 10 years in prison and $10,000 in fines, and if she is convicted, she will lose any future right to vote in New Hampshire.
According to her LinkedIn and Facebook accounts, Lowndes :
- Was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Honduras between 1989 and 1991.
- Worked for the agency for five years between 1996 and 2001 on the PC staff in the Dominican Republic.
- Since 2015 held positions in Peace Corps/Washington office working in the Inter-America and Pacific Region, and was Country Director, Eastern Caribbean.
- Since May, 2020 she has been the chief of operations for Volunteer Recruitment and Selection in Peace Corps/Washington.
For more than seven years, she was the director of development and special initiatives for the Connecticut Commission on Children.
Lowndes appears to have no connection to New Hampshire in any way, according to information online.
It is unknown which political party, if any, Lowndes was accused of registering with at the time, but according to her Facebook site, she is a supporter of both Joe Biden and the Black Lives Matter organization. Lowndes did not return an instant message via Facebook requesting comment about the case however, about 12 hours after receiving the instant message, she scrubbed her Facebook page of all personal information.
The Peace Corps press office did not return a request for comment about the case before post time.
Ms. Lowndes is presumed innocent until found otherwise by a jury of her peers.
I fully agree Jim, you’d think the Peace Corps would stand behind their employees.
Yes, but this seems horrible. Fodder for Drumpf.
She is ONE of 5,313 out-of-state voters NH can prove were not citizens when the used and address other than their true domicile to vote.
For some reason the NH AG’s Office Elections Unit indicted her.
It might be that Project Veritas paid a recorded visit to the office the day before.
5,312 more to go!
Ed Naile
Chairman, Coalition of NH Taxpayers
Documenting voter fraud for 20 years.
cnht.org
Sir, I do not agree with voter fraud as you do. She did not try to vote in other states as well as NH. That would be voter fraud. It was not a premeditated effort to deceive the state. She cast a vote only in this state. But as with anything, there can be exceptions, mistakes and misunderstanding of the laws. The state thought they had an “ I got you” moment without actually believing that it could have just simply been a mistake. This was not taxpayers money well spent.
The Peace Corps MUST improve it’s policies on allowing ex-pats to successfully vote in absentia. If there is culpability for this Peace Corps ex-pat,and Granite Grok spokesperson Steve MacDonald has stated “not the first Peace Corp member”, then it is a shared culpability with the Peace Corps itself.
US citizens working and/or serving abroad most certainly have the right to vote in elections back home. I voted in the 2016 election while serving abroad in Morocco for the Peace Corps, and I had the right to do so and am glad I did.
The State Department has clear guidelines for how to vote from overseas (https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-travel/while-abroad/voting.html). As long as the rules are followed, no one in the Peace Corps or any other overseas organization with US citizen employees and volunteers should be discouraged from voting.
Those in the thread supporting voter suppression, you are on the wrong side of history (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States). Every citizen has the right to cast a proper vote.
Project Veritas is a right-wing disinformation outfit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Veritas#Attempt_to_solicit_voter_fraud_(2014)) and has attempted to solicit voter fraud in the past and been exposed for it. I wonder if that organization and those who support it have also seen that the President attempted to register to vote in Florida using an out-of-state address. (https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/03/politics/trump-florida-voter-registration/index.html) Are they also up in arms about that or does it only matter when someone from a different party does it?
With all due respect: This past week Mary Kate Lowndes has been in the NH Superior Court with attorney William Christi. The defense has prevailed. Mary Kate has been found NOT GUILTY on all charges. Perhaps this deserves a non-partisan, fair, follow-up article?
Well she just got found not guilty on all charges.
Politically biased prosecution to begin with.
Sad that the Peace Corps does not stand behind their employees.
I was a juror in the trial of this woman. She was found not guilty on all three charges because in our opinion, all 12 of us, the state did not prove to us that she acted KNOWINGLY and DELIBERATELY to bypass the state regulations. And that was their driving point of view in all three charges. She registered to vote using a Fed. Govt. Voting registration post card, which was accepted by the town, but it didn’t cover the rules for voting using an absentee ballot in NH. Too many holes in the process to outright find her guilty. The state, when notified that you want to vote while living outside of CONUS using the Fed. Govt. Voting registration post card should automatically send them NH absentee registration form. This spells out NH regulations so that there can be no confusion in the process and they understand the rules before voting.