A man who moved from Pennsylvania to Florida has been convicted on voter fraud charges after casting a ballot for Donald Trump twice in the 2020 election, federal prosecutors said.
A jury found Matthew Laiss, 32, guilty of voter fraud charges Wednesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia announced.
Prosecutors said Laiss was initially registered to vote in Ottsville, Pennsylvania, where his parents live. But around August 2020, he moved his primary residence to Frostproof, Florida, and applied for a driver’s license and voter registration.
Then in October 2020, a mail-in ballot was sent to his parents’ home. Laiss filled out and returned that ballot before the end of October, and then in November, voted in person at his polling place in Florida.
Attorneys for Laiss said in a court filing that both of his ballots were cast for President Trump. The federal public defenders had filed a motion to dismiss the charges, arguing that Laiss was covered by Trump’s November 2025 pardons related to the 2020 election.
The pardons named several people in Trump’s orbit who fought to overturn the 2020 election results. Laiss’ attorneys said it covered him because the pardon extended to anyone disciplined for “conduct relating to support, voting,…or advocacy for or of any slate or proposed slate of Presidential electors, whether or not recognized by any State or State official, in connection with the 2020 Presidential Election.”
Defense attorneys also argued against what they called “unequivocal absurdity” that “individuals like John Eastman, Rudolph Giuliani, Mark Meadows, and Sidney Powell … are explicitly pardoned for their exponentially more egregious alleged conduct, while a then-26-year-old man who cast two votes for President Trump in the general election is not.”
Laiss is scheduled for sentencing in June and faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison, three years of supervised release and fines ranging from $10,000 to $250,000 on each of the two charges for which he was convicted.
U.S. Attorney David Metcalf said the conviction “reinforces a simple principle: our elections must be fair, secure and lawful.”
“Casting a ballot in more than one jurisdiction undermines public trust and dilutes the votes of others. Our office will continue to protect the integrity of federal elections and hold accountable those who violate the law,” Metcalf said.
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