Shaker Heights Trump Supporter Convicted of Voter Fraud in 2020 and 2022 Elections

James Dalton Saunders, a 56-year-old tax lawyer living in Shaker Heights, was convicted of two accounts of voter fraud. Credit: Mark Oprea

In a case leaning on deep political overtones from the Trump Era, 56-year-old James Dalton Saunders was convicted on two counts of election fraud in a courtroom on Tuesday. He was taken into immediate custody pending sentencing on the fourth-degree felonies and faces anywhere from probation to three years in prison.

Judge Andrew Santoli of the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court refused to buy the arguments of Saunders’ attorney, Roger Scott Hurley, heard during trial in July, that Saunders “couldn’t remember,” as Santoli recalled, voting twice in the 2020 general and 2022 primary elections.

“This evidence clearly shows James Saunders voting in these election cycles—and since at least 2014,” Santoli said from his bench, referring to signatures and mail-in forms from board of elections in Ohio and Florida. “Arguing accidents or this done without his knowledge are just unbelievable.” He wasn’t charged for the previous two elections because the statute of limitations had expired.

As rehashed Tuesday morning, Saunders, a tax lawyer who divided his time between Shaker Heights and Pompano Beach, Florida, orchestrated a multi-state scheme to vote double in at least four presidential elections.

On November 2, 2020, Saunders voted early in that year’s general election at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. Two days later, on November 4th, Saunders voted again by mail, in a ballot sent to 42 6th St. NE, in Pulaski, Virginia. (Saunders practiced law in Washington, D.C., records show.) The ballot was later signed and mailed from Saunders’ home in Pompano Beach, Santoli told the courtroom.

Then, on November 8, 2022, Saunders voted at Woodbury Elementary School in Shaker Heights, only to vote again by mail from his Pompano home on Ocean Blvd.

The duplicate votes led Saunders to be flagged for illegal behavior in Ohio’s Electronic Registration Information Center, known as ERIC. An investigation in Attorney General Frank LaRose’s office found that Saunders was casting duplicitous votes, as well, in 2014 and 2016.

Judge Andrew Santoli rejected Saunders’ claims that the double voting was “accidental” or due to a “reckless mental state.” “Your opinion does not outweigh other citizens,” he said. Credit: Mark Oprea

“Mr. Saunders is the poster child for voter fraud. He thought he could outsmart the system, but today’s verdict proves he was wrong,” Prosecutor Michael O’Malley said in a statement Tuesday. “Judge Santoli’s verdict and remanding of this defendant sends a stern message that voter fraud will not be tolerated.”

Santoli’s verdict Monday, the first of its kind this year for the prosecutor’s team present, calls to mind the drama tossed around during the 2020 Presidential election, after which President-elect Donald Trump spent months contesting in district courts in half a dozen states alleging voter fraud by Democrats.

According to state records, Saunders has been a registered Republican for decades, and has donated “more than $3,000,” News5 discovered, to right-leaning candidates and political action committees since at least 2013. Political affiliations aside, records show Saunders was “in good standing” in the Florida Bar. In Shaker, he was a regular donor to the Cleveland Orchestra and the Cleveland Museum of Art.

In an interview after Santoli’s verdict, the prosecution team—Andrew Rogalski, David Lehrke and Brandon Piteo—denied any outside influence from the voter fraud zeitgeist still fresh in our memories.

“We are solely focused on the facts in this case,” Rogalski, the lead attorney, told Scene. “This is definite moving forward, as to protect voters’ interest in the state of Ohio.”

As Santoli agreed in his finding, in line with federal voting laws, because Saunders’ actions involved a national election, such violations in Florida were in the jurisdiction of the Cuyahoga County courts.

“You violated the premise that every citizen, regardless of race, creed or religion, speaks in one voice,” Santoli said. “Your opinion does not outweigh other citizens.”

Roger Scott Hurley, Saunders’ attorney, asked the judge to “not remand” his client based on the dent the conviction will put in his legal career. Saunders himself did not speak after the guilty verdict was announced, nor did he testify in his defense..

He will be sentenced in Cuyahoga County court on August 28, 2023.
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