By Brendan Kirby
PoliZette
October 13, 2017
Research by an elections watchdog group has turned up evidence that a noncitizen registered to vote in New Jersey — three different times.
Records show that Kassiah Kamara, who lives in the state’s largest city, Newark, registered to vote in May 2004 and then again — with his first and last name transposed — in October of that year. He registered a third time in October 2008.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation produced a report last month detailing more than 600 improperly registered voters, but it did not include information from Essex and Middlesex counties, which had not responded to a records request.
Essex County complied with the records request this week, including the case of Kamara. Logan Churchwell, a spokesman for the voter integrity group, said he has not examined all of the records. But he added that the Kamara case is particularly telling because his triple registration apparently did not raise any red flags. Nor did the ballot he cast in the 2008 election, Churchwell said.
In fact, he said, it may not have been caught at all had Kamara not come forward.
“I’am not a U.S. citizen please Remove me from the system,” he scrawled on a voter form sent to elections officials in 2011.
Churchwell said it is unclear why Kamara asked to be removed years after he had registered and voted. Often, he said, noncitizens take action to correct invalid voter registrations when they are trying to become U.S. citizens.
The vast majority of noncitizens removed from the voter rolls in New Jersey, in fact, asked to be taken off, he said. About 10 percent were uncovered in some other way, such as when they told a federal court clerk that they could not serve on a jury because they were not citizens. He said immigration attorneys or U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials often recommend that noncitizens take action.
