By Hans von Spakovsky
Election integrity foes mistakenly tell us voter fraud is a myth. So when legitimate voter fraud is actually discovered, these foes pretend it didn’t happen, fail to take any steps to investigate or prosecute such cases, or, even worse, try to cover it up. Take Virginia, where the State Board of Elections and some local election officials want to hide a blatant case of voter fraud involving noncitizens.
Penalties for voting as a non-citizen
Follow When non-citizens register or actually vote, they violate both state and federal statutes because citizenship is a requirement to vote in both state and federal elections. Falsely claiming to be a citizen on a voter registration form is a felony that violates three different federal statutes. Voting by a non-citizen under 18 U.S.C. §611 is a strict liability offense. In other words, it “does not require proof that the offender was aware that citizenship is a prerequisite to voting.” Article II, Section 1 of the Virginia constitution requires a voter to be a citizen, and §24.2-1004 of the Virginia Code makes it a felony to vote when you are “not qualified to vote” in the state.
So you would think state and local election officials would treat these crimes with appropriate seriousness. Guess again.
When I was a member of the Fairfax County Electoral Board in Virginia, we discovered close to 300 non-citizens who had illegally registered in our county, about half of whom had also illegally voted in prior elections. We removed those individuals from the voter rolls and forwarded their files to both the Commonwealth Attorney (Virginia’s equivalent of the county district attorney) and the U.S. Justice Department for investigation and prosecution. Neither took any action to enforce the law against these non-citizens.
