Man charged with voting in N.H., Fla. during 2018 election

A 77-year-old man surrendered himself to authorities Friday afternoon after an arrest warrant charged him with voting in both New Hampshire and Florida during last November’s general election, officials said.

Robert A. Bell faces one count of voting in more than one state prohibited, a class B felony, according to the New Hampshire attorney general’s office.

Authorities allege he knowingly checked in at a “checklist” in Atkinson and cast a New Hampshire ballot after having already cast a ballot in the same election in Florida.

On Friday, he was released on bail. He is scheduled to be arraigned in Rockingham County Superior Court on May 3.

Voter fraud is rare in New Hampshire, despite President Trump suggesting otherwise in the past. In 2017, Trump told a small group of senators that he lost New Hampshire in the general election because there were “thousands” of people who were “brought in on buses” from neighboring Massachusetts to “illegally vote.”

The accusations prompted the state of New Hampshire to launch a months-long investigation into whether voter fraud had in fact occurred. Officials found that claims of massive voter fraud in the state were nothing but a myth.

According to a state review of the 2016 general election, among the 743,000 voters who cast ballots in that contest, just four appeared to have voted illegally, mostly out of confusion about where they were supposed to vote.