Las Vegas executive faces voter fraud charges in 2020 election
A Las Vegas business executive is facing two voter fraud charges related to the 2020 election, the attorney general’s office announced Thursday.
Donald Kirk Hartle, 55, faces felony counts of voting more than once in the same election and voting using another person’s name.
“Voter fraud is rare, but when it happens it undercuts trust in our election system and will not be tolerated by my office,” Attorney General Aaron Ford said in a statement. “I want to stress that our office will pursue any credible allegations of voter fraud and will work to bring any offenders to justice.”
Both charges carry a possible prison term of up to four years and a fine of up to $5,000.
Hartle, the CFO of the Ahern family of companies, is accused of voting under the name of his late wife, Rosemarie Hartle, who died in 2017.
David Chesnoff, Hartle’s attorney, said his client looks forward to responding to the allegations in court.
The state began investigating an allegation of a vote being cast in Rosemarie Hartle’s name last year. Handwriting on her ballot was a match for what Clark County had on record, a county spokesman told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in November.
Many Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, promoted unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election in Nevada.
The case of Rosemarie Hartle’s vote was highlighted by the Nevada Republican Party at the time.
“Kirk was surprised to find that his late wife Rosemarie, a Republican, cast a ballot in this years election despite having passed away in 17’,” the party tweeted. “The media needs to understand we are finding concrete cases of voter irregularities that they must expose.”
Don Ahern, the head of the Ahern family of companies, is the state GOP’s finance chairman and a supporter of the former president. Two of his companies faced fines last year for hosting Trump events that defied state-imposed measures to combat the pandemic.
A lawyer for the Ahern family of companies could not be reached for comment.
Contact Blake Apgar at bapgar@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5298. Follow @blakeapgar on Twitter.
