charged. If, for example, the voter was not led to believe that he or she would be paid for voting until after applying for, and receiving, an absentee ballot package, then the only mailing affected by bribery would be the transmission of the ballot package to the election authority; the Travel Act charge is best predicated on this final mailing, with some other subsequent overt act charged. 11. Mail and Wire Fraud: 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341 and 1343 The federal mail a n d w i r e fraud statutes prohibit use of the United States mails, or a private or commercial interstate carrier, or the use of interstate wire communications to further a “scheme or artifice to defraud.” 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341 and 1343. 33 Violations are punishable by imprisonment for up to twenty years. Despite their prior broad application to election fraud at the state and local level, post-McNally, 483 U.S. 350 (1987), and Skilling, 561 U.S. 358 (2010), the mail and wire fraud statutes reach only those schemes to defraud others of property rights, and schemes to deprive others of the intangible right to honest services through bribery or kickbacks under 18. U.S.C. § 1346. Section 1346, therefore, likely will not provide a basis for prosecuting most types of election fraud. Federal prosecutors should consult with the Public Integrity Section before using Section 1346 in the context of election fraud. (a) “Salary Theory” of mail and wire fraud The Court’s narrowing of the mail and wire fraud statutes does not entirely foreclose their use in prosecuting election fraud. Schemes to obtain salaried positions by falsely representing the applicant’s credentials to a hiring authority remain prosecutable under the mail a n d w i r e fraud statutes after McNally. The objective of such “salary schemes” is to obtain pecuniary items – i.e., “money or property” – by fraud; such schemes are therefore clearly within the The mail and wire fraud statutes are essentially identical, except for their jurisdictional requirements. 33 67