In the city of Pensacola, Florida, seventeen-year-old Tate High School students Emily Grover and Laura Carroll, Grover’s mother, used Carroll’s position as assistant principal of the school to access records and cast over 200 fake votes in Grover’s favor in her bid to become homecoming queen. The two were arrested for the crime in March. Although Grover was a minor at the time of the crime, she turned 18 on April 16, 2021, which means that she can be tried as an adult. Both of them are facing up to 16 years in prison if they are convicted of the crime they are accused of committing. Each of them posted bail, with Carrol’s set at $6000 and Grover’s set at $2000. Their arraignment was set for May 14, 2021, when they would be expected back in court. They stand accused of several charges brought about by fraudulent voting.
They each face several charges related to accessing privileged student information in order to cast fraudulent votes. Yahoo News has reported that the charges include several felonies related to illegal computer use and use of sensitive information, as well as misdemeanor plotting to commit these offenses. Authorities had learned about the fraud back in October when the Escambia County School District’s software alerted them to widespread fraud in the high school’s homecoming election. The school got the Florida Department of Law Enforcement involved due to the sheer amount of student information that had been compromised. Carrol and Grover had used 2 devices in order to cast 246 fake votes in Grover’s favor.
A student council coordinator for the school district also learned that Grover had been talking about using her mother’s FOCUS account in order to rig the homecoming election. The FOCUS system allows parents and teachers to access sensitive information about their students. Investigators discovered that Grover had been accessing and using her mother’s FOCUS account to look at the sensitive information of other students for several years. Grover and Carroll together hatched the plot to rig the homecoming election using the FOCUS system. In doing so, they compromised the data of students across the entire school district. Unsurprisingly, Grover has been expelled from her high school, and Carroll lost her position as assistant principal following her arrest. A spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement has confirmed that the investigation into the matter is still ongoing, as the extent of the breach is sorted out. The mother-daughter pair awaits trial, and it is unclear what their fate will be going forward. What is clear is that the prize of fraudulently winning homecoming queen is almost certainly not worth the hardship that the pair has brought about for themselves and for the students whose sensitive information they compromised.
