Trump supporter who voted twice using late wife's ballot gets sentenced to probation

A Nevada man was sentenced to probation Tuesday for illegally using a ballot sent to his deceased wife to vote in the November 2020 presidential election.

Donald "Kirk" Hartle, 55, was also fined $2,000, after pleading guilty to one count of voting more than once in the same election, Las Vegas' Channel 8 reports. Hartle had faced up to four years behind bars before reaching a deal with prosecutors to avoid jail.

Hartle cast a ballot on behalf of his wife, Rosemary, who died in 2017. Hartle later claimed that someone else had used his wife's ballot to vote, and the case was cited by the Nevada Republican Party and conservative activists as evidence of widespread voter fraud.

"Hartle is the chief financial officer at Ahern Rentals, which hosted a rally for former President Donald Trump last September and was cited for violating coronavirus protocols," the station reports. "The umbrella company hosted a QAnon conference in October at the Ahern Hotel off the Las Vegas Strip."

READ MORE: Nevada 'voter fraud' case hyped by Trump campaign exposed as criminal hoax by prosecutors

In sentencing Hartle, Judge Carli Kierny said, "Ultimately to me, this seems like a cheap political stunt that kind of backfired and shows that our voting system actually works because you were ultimately caught."

Days after the election, Hartle told Channel 8 that someone else had used his wife's ballot to vote. "That is pretty sickening to me to be honest with you," Hartle said. "It was disbelief. It made no sense to me, but it lent some credence to what you've been hearing in the media about these possibilities and now it makes me wonder how pervasive is this?"

Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Consevative Union, later named Rosemarie Hartle as one example of the "hundreds of dead people" he said had voted in the election in Clark County, the Nevada Independent reported. And the Nevada GOP wrote on Twitter on Nov. 10, "'Disbelief' and 'sickening'... That's how Kirk Hartle feels about someone voting in his deceased wife's name. How did the forged signature pass @ClarkCountyNV's signature verification machine? And this is isn't the only case of a deceased person voting in NV."

Channel 8 notes that as of Tuesday, when Hartle was sentenced, the Nevada GOP's tweet had not been removed.

Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, a Democrat, said after Hartle's sentencing: "Though rare, voter fraud can undercut trust in our election system. This particular case of voter fraud was particularly egregious because the offender continually spread inaccurate information about our elections despite being the source of fraud himself. I am glad to see Mr. Hartle being held accountable for his actions, and I want to stress that our office will pursue any credible allegations of voter fraud."