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Jason Schofield, the former Rensselaer County Elections Commissioner, has been sentenced to one year of probation for committing identity theft. On Monday (December 9), a judge ordered Schofield to pay a fine of $2,000 and a $1,200 special assessment after he admitted to using voters' names and birth dates to fraudulently apply for absentee ballots during the 2021 local elections.
Schofield, 45, from Troy, New York, resigned from his position in December 2022 before pleading guilty to a 12-count indictment. He confessed to falsely certifying that he was the voter requesting the ballots through the New York State Voter Absentee Ballot Application Request Portal. Schofield also admitted to taking nine of the ballots, knowing that official records would falsely indicate they were mailed to the voters.
While Schofield avoided jail time, his case was part of a larger investigation into ballot fraud in Rensselaer County. Three other defendants, Rich Crist, Jim Gordon, and Leslie Wallace, were found not guilty in September. All three are high-ranking members of Rensselaer County Executive Steve McLaughlin’s administration, although McLaughlin was not charged in the case.
According to Spectrum News, Schofield's actions were deemed unlawful by the U.S. Attorney's Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.