Another district court case,
United States v. Randle, 39 F.Supp. 759 (W.D. La.1941), relied upon by appellants, held that the mail fraud statute could not be applied in an election fraud case because neither the voters nor the sovereign had been defrauded of money or property. The court's opinion in
Randle, however, appears to reflect a misunderstanding of the statutory basis for the indictment involved in that case, for two of the three cases cited by the
Randle court dealt with a federal court's lack of statutory authority to prosecute in voter bribery cases under a statute making it a substantive offense to oppress citizens in the exercise of rights granted by the Constitution or laws of the United States. See
United States v. Bathgate, 246 U.S. 220, 38 S.Ct. 269, 62 L.Ed. 676 (1918);
United States v. Gradwell, 243 U.S. 476, 37 S.Ct. 407, 61 L.Ed. 857 (1917).
Gradwell also held that the conspiracy to bribe voters was not a “conspiracy to defraud the United States” under a predecessor to
18 U.S.C. § 371, a provision different from the mail fraud statute involved in
Randle and in our case. The third opinion cited by
Randle, United States v. Hammerschmidt, 265 U.S. 182, 44 S.Ct. 511, 68 L.Ed. 968 (1924), also was prosecuted under a predecessor to
§ 371. Although the
Hammerschmidt decision mentioned the mail fraud statute in dictum, it stated that an earlier circuit court of appeals case
had held that there need not be a finding of “trickery or cunning” for the conduct to be included within the language of the mail fraud statute, and that the holding in
Horman should be limited to cases involving fraud of money or property.
In the instant case, it is obvious that “trickery or cunning” was involved in the scheme to falsify voter registration affidavits.