the candidates on the ballot. In a few cases the defendant also personally marked others’ ballots. Id. The Sixth Circuit held that the concept “votes more than once” in Section 10307(e) was unconstitutionally vague as applied to these facts. Id. at 1379. Because the phrase “votes more than once” was not defined in the statute, the court found the phrase did not clearly apply when the defendant did not physically mark another’s ballot. Id. The court further held that, even if the defendant did mark another’s ballot, it wasn’t clear this was an act of “voting” by the defendant if the defendant got the ostensible voters to demonstrate “consent” by signing their names to the accompanying ballot forms. Id. 22 In a similar multiple-voting opinion published one year after the Sixth Circuit’s Salisbury decision, however, the Seventh Circuit, with the benefit of more detailed jury instructions, took a different approach. United States v. Cole, 41 F.3d 303 (7th Cir. 1994). In both cases, the defendants had marked absentee ballots of other persons after getting the voters to sign their ballot documents. The Seventh Circuit rejected the Sixth Circuit’s contention that the term “vote” was unconstitutionally vague, finding that the term was broadly and adequately defined in the Voting Rights Act itself, 52 U.S.C. § 10310(c)(1), and that this statutory definition was supported by both the dictionary and the commonly understood meaning of the word. Id. at 308–09. The Seventh Circuit thus held that the facts established a clear violation by the defendant of the multiple-voting prohibition in Section 10307(e). 23 In addition to their conflicting holdings, the Salisbury and Cole opinions differ in their approach to so-called voter “assistance” 22 The Salisbury court noted that in United States v. Hogue, 812 F.2d 1568 (11th Cir. 1987), the jury was instructed that illegal voting under Section 10307(e) included marking another person’s ballot without his or her “express or implied consent,” but found that, based on the facts of Salisbury, the jury should also have been given definitions of “vote” and “consent.” Salisbury, 983 F.2d at 1377. “Ordinary people can conclude that the absentee voters were not expressing their wills or preferences, i.e., that Cole was using the absentee voters’ ballots to vote his will and preferences.” Cole, 41 F.3d at 308. 23 47

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