wow Im glad that much to moms chagrin i wasn’t into the HS social scene…seems mom let the daughter do as she pleased an said daughter wasn’t really hiding it it seems
Sweet little 16 years in jail, how poetic,
And people who try to fix actual elections don’t face penalties like that.
She’d probably be looking at less time if she had simply killed her opponents.
I wouldn’t support a single day in jail for something like this. The very idea is ridiculous. The conviction and public humiliation is punishment enough. The mother, however, is a different story. There are many legalities surrounding the maintenance and use of a school’s student database which, probably, is Powerschool because that’s what the large majority of districts use. At the very least, she should lose her job for violating the confidentiality of the database. She and the district may be subject to civil suits because of her actions.
Sounds like a story hatched by a deputy, a lawyer and the beat reporter, hyped on coffee and doughnuts. Could be strung together about virtually any set of trivial charges, but common sense usually keeps such hypothetical speculation out of print.
The girl will never spend a minute in jail, (nor should she) and if there is a fine, it’ll be no more than bail posted. Any traffic cop will tell you, if he had 30 minutes to search, he could send every traffic stop to jail.
Along with going on the girl’s permanent record! 
Don’t give them any ideas! LOL
If they walked past a two-story piano factory, they COULD have been crushed by a Steinway. I hate headline writers.
This is a pervasive problem in news media articles about potential prison sentences: they overwhelmingly overstate the the penalty the perp is likely to actually serve. For example articles about Derek Michael Chauvin talk about 40 year sentences; but he will actually serve a small fraction of this.
In this case I expect the biggest negative consequence will be the amount of the lawyer’s fees.
“It’s the oldest trick in the book: the distortion of truth by association.”
These stories all use the theoretical maximum sentence for the clickbait headlines, a sentence that there is absolutely no chance whatsoever of being imposed.
I could see the Mom doing some time, like a year in County. But the kid? Nothing.
The article quotes the prosecutor for the number of potential years of incarceration, so it could be a press-happy DA (that seems redundant to me) at fault.
Or it could simply be stating the fact that the charged offense carries a certain maximum penalty. I wouldn’t read much else into that.
Why? She may have accessed it for a frivolous reason, but the point is that she accessed a computer system with private information in it, without any lawful authority. Why should she be spared any punishment, if convicted?
I would assume that those accounts would contain personal and private information, such as dates of birth and health information. Why should she get a pass from breaching her fellow students’ privacy in that way? If convicted, why shouldn’t she be punished, but on the youth tariff?
I agree. The headlines are inflammatory. She is not being punished for fixing the homecoming election. She is being punished (if convicted) for computer hacking, which ain’t cool.
It is sort of like these stories where a guy spits out his gum on the sidewalk, a cop sees it and goes to write him a warning citation for littering and the guy fires at the cop, gets in his car leading them on a three state high speed pursuit causing thousands in property damage, injuring scores, that ends with the guy being killed and the headline is “Man Killed For Spitting Gum on Sidewalk.”
Ugh, there’s more to this story than I thought after reading the linked article. It turns out this wasn’t just in conjunction with the Homecoming vote [bolding mine]:
“The report stated that Grover had voted for herself in other students’ names and she was able to do so because she had access to her mother’s FOCUS account,” according to the affidavit, which also included statements from students who told investigators that Grover had been using her mother’s FOCUS account to glean information on classmates since at least her freshman year.
“She looks up all of our group of friends’ grades and makes comments about how she can find our test scores all of the time,” one student told investigators, according to the affidavit.
The school administrators began the expulsion process last December. During that process, Grover admitted in an email to the superintendent to
“using my mom’s password and looking at information I should not have seen in FOCUS,'” she purportedly wrote, according to the affidavit. “‘Of everything I’ve done wrong, ignorance is hurting me most. I 100% knew it was wrong and would do anything to undo it but I had no idea this much trouble could come from this.’”
TL;DR: Groves used her mother’s password to access other students’ grades and test scores for 3 years. She and her mother also changed votes for Homecoming Queen.
I’d be surprised if either serves time, but I’m betting probation and some pretty hefty fines.
Well, they are both going to get an education regarding this.
Any slightest amount of prison time for this is ludicrous. Then again, this is America, where people can get 45 years for dealing drugs.