Sonoma County man, 77, sentenced for voter fraud ‘experiment’: DA

(KRON) — William Eschenbach, a 77-year-old Occidental man, was convicted and sentenced on Tuesday by a Sonoma County Superior Court Judge for voter fraud, the Sonoma County District Attorney said.

The DA’s Office investigated the case after receiving a referral from the Sonoma County Registrar of Voters’ Office. Another local resident notified the office after noticing Eschenbach posting comments on X, formerly known as Twitter, about voting twice in two separate elections in 2022.

In January 2024, Eschenbach posted on X saying he believed mail-in voting was “insecure” and that he did “an experiment” to prove it by voting twice in the last two elections. After his experiment, Eschenbach said he “never heard back” from election officials, so he believed he had “proved that mail-in is insecure,” the DA’s office said.

Unbeknownst to Eschenbach, the Election Management System (EMS) automatically voided his extra vote-by-mail ballot when officials noticed he submitted more than one vote, the DA’s office said.

Through further investigation, officials determined that Eschenbach had first sent in his first mail-in ballot before election day, and while that was getting processed, he voted in person on election day “with the intention to cast two votes,” the DA’s office said. Eschenbach did this in both the June 2022 primary election and the November 2022 general election.

Due to election safeguards, both of Eschenbach’s attempts to vote twice resulted in a single vote. “It is important to understand that the election safeguards worked as intended to prevent fraud and protect the integrity of the vote,” Registrar of Voters Deva Marie Proto said.

Eschenbach was sentenced to six months of court-supervised probation, to complete 40 hours of community service, and to pay $500 in restitution to the Sonoma County Registrar of Voter’s Office.