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Chinese national charged with voting illegally in Michigan, authorities say
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Chinese national charged with voting illegally in Michigan, authorities say



cnn

Michigan prosecutors have charged a Chinese national with voter fraud and perjury after he allegedly voted in the 2024 election, authorities announced Wednesday.

Sources familiar with the matter told CNN that the 19-year-old Chinese man who reportedly voted is a student living in Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan. Authorities said the man is not a U.S. citizen and therefore cannot vote in federal elections.

The announcement from Michigan’s secretary of state and attorney general, as well as local prosecutors in Ann Arbor, comes as former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies spread concerns on the massive vote of non-citizens. Experts say Illegal voting by non-citizens is extremely rare, and when it happens, it is usually detected quickly.

“Investigations in several states and across the country have found no evidence that large numbers of noncitizens have registered to vote. Even less common is for a non-citizen to vote. When it happens, we take it very seriously,” Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Washtenaw County Prosecutor Eli Savit, both Democrats, said in a statement.

They also said that “any non-citizen who attempts to vote fraudulently in Michigan will be exposing themselves to great risk and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Investigators in Michigan are still investigating whether this was an isolated incident, an accident or possibly part of an attempt by China to interfere in the 2024 election, and federal investigators are also looking into the matter, a source familiar with the matter told CNN. the matter.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who is also a Democrat, said in a statement that his office has launched a “parallel and independent investigation” into the situation.

Authorities did not identify the Chinese student accused of voting in the election. He faces one count of illegal attempt to vote and one count of perjury, both felonies.

It appears that the student’s vote cannot be voided after the fact and will be counted.

Washtenaw County Clerk Lawrence Kestenbaum told CNN that ballots cannot be recovered once they have been through the tabulator. Unlike voting by mail, ballots cast at in-person polling locations do not contain any identifying information about the individual voter, making it impossible to determine which one belonged to the student, Kestenbaum said.

“There’s a box of ballots under the tabulator and all the ballots, they all look the same… there’s no way to go back and undo it,” Kestenbaum said in an interview.

Experts said this is standard election procedure to maintain secrecy.

“An in-person ballot is placed in a tabulator or ballot box, interspersed with other ballots. This is to preserve secrecy, so you can’t go to the ballot later and confirm who a particular priest voted for,” said David Becker, former Justice Department voting rights official and founder of the nonpartisan Center for Electoral Innovation and Research.

After the charges were announced, Michigan Republican operatives and state legislators He took advantage of the news to criticize Democrats for not requiring proof of citizenship to vote.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, an electoral law expert at Stetson University, said this is one of the “disadvantages” of the secret ballot, which was instituted to prevent vote buying.

Earlier in American history, different colored ballots were sometimes used for different political parties, making it easier to meddle in the process. Secret voting for in-person votes ensures that “no one can trace a particular vote back to a particular voter,” Torres-Spelliscy said.

“Removing an incorrectly cast ballot is basically impossible because it looks like any other ballot cast by an eligible voter,” CNN contributor Torres-Spelliscy said, adding that the Chinese national who voted in Michigan “swore under penalty of perjury that he was American citizen, so this explains why election workers would hand you a ballot.”