Three men, including two sitting local officials, are facing federal charges that they tried to steal a 2021 mayoral election in Pennsylvania. It didn’t work, but an indictment unveiled last week alleges that they falsely registered nearly three dozen people living elsewhere to addresses in Millbourne, population 1,200, before requesting and filling out fraudulent mail ballots.

Md Nurul Hasan is vice president of the Millbourne borough council. Md Munsur Ali is also a council member, and Md Rafikul Islam is a former one. Mr. Hasan lost the Democratic primary for mayor in 2021 by a close vote of 138 to 120. When he ran as a write-in candidate that November, the trio allegedly attempted to put him over the top via fraudulent means.

Pennsylvanians can update their voter registrations on a website that verifies identity by asking for a driver’s license number. Prosecutors say the men “persuaded many of their non-Millbourne friends and acquaintances to show them their driver’s licenses or other documents,” promising that out-of-towners “would not get in trouble as long as they did not vote in another election in November.” Other ID details were allegedly taken nonconsensually, including from Mr. Hasan’s business.

Once the outsiders were registered to Millbourne, the feds say the defendants then used the website to request mail ballots, which they cast for Mr. Hasan. In some cases they allegedly “forged the voters’ signatures.” In others, the vote was presented “to the non-Millbourne resident to whom the ballot had been addressed, and the non-resident signed the envelope.”

The effort failed, and the Democratic mayoral candidate won the 2021 race, 165 to 138. All three men pleaded not guilty to the charges this week, according to court records.

On the one hand, this was caught despite the small number of ballots involved. That’s a reason for confidence in much larger margins, such as when President Trump won Pennsylvania in 2024 by 120,266 votes, and also when he lost it in 2020 by 80,555.

On the other hand, it’s alarming how easy such a scheme appears to be. What if a foreign adversary got its hands on hacked or leaked driver’s license data? The indictment—and the long time after the 2021 to bring charges—is another argument for states to pull back from the Covid-19 voting laxity of absentee-for-everybody. The price of democracy is vigilance, and voting fraud isn’t a myth.