Arizona woman accused of casting dead mother's mail-in ballot is a registered Republican

An Arizona woman indicted for casting her dead mother's early ballot in the November 2020 election is a registered Republican, according to the Arizona Mirror.

There's no word on whether 63-year-old Tracey Kay McKee of Scottsdale, who's charged with one count of illegal voting and one count of perjury, cast the ballot for former president Donald Trump, President Joe Biden, or another candidate.

According to the Arizona Attorney General's Office, McKee's mother died on Oct. 5, two days before early voting began and election officials began mailing early ballots to voters, the Mirror reports. The indictment alleges that McKee forged her mother's name on the ballot and submitted it to election officials sometime between the start of early voting on Oct. 7 and election day on Nov. 3.

The AG's office says it began investigating McKee in response to a tip from a resident who submitted the names of deceased voters "who may have voted" in the 2020 general election. According to the Mirror, the resident was conservative activist Merissa Hamilton, a Donald Trump supporter and former Phoenix mayoral candidate who's been linked to Arizona's Patriot Movement.

"While no crime was alleged to have occurred with the bulk of the names referred, AGO agents thoroughly investigated the claims and determined almost every individual named in the provided complaint was either alive, that the deceased individual had not voted (even though they were sent a ballot in the mail), or the voter died after mailing their ballot," a spokeswoman for the AG's office told the Mirror in an email.

Arizona, of course, has become ground zero for Trump supporters' false claims that the 2020 election was stolen — and the GOP-led state Senate has commissioned an ongoing partisan audit of ballots cast in Maricopa County.

The Mirror reports that as of last year, the AG's office had successfully prosecuted about 30 voter fraud cases since 2010, about two dozen of which involved double-voting.

Biden won Arizona by more than 10,000 votes.