Authorities say Chinese national charged with illegal voting in Michigan

CNN
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Michigan authorities announced Wednesday that Michigan prosecutors have charged a Chinese national with voter fraud and perjury after he allegedly returned a ballot in the 2024 election.

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

The announcement by Michigan’s secretary of state and attorney general and local prosecutors in Ann Arbor comes as former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies spread fears about mass voting by foreigners. Experts say illegal voting by non-citizens is extremely rare, and when it does occur, it is usually caught quickly.

“Investigations in multiple states and across the country found no evidence that large numbers of foreigners registered to vote. It is even rarer for a non-citizen to actually vote. When this happens, we take it extremely seriously,” Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Washtenaw County Attorney Eli Savit, both Democrats, said in a statement.

They also stated that “any foreigner who attempts to vote fraudulently in Michigan will be at great risk and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

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

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, also a Democrat, said in: statement that her office had launched an “independent, parallel investigation” into the situation.

Authorities have not identified the Chinese student accused of participating in the election. He faces one count of illegally attempting to vote and one count of perjury, both felonies.

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

Washtenaw County Clerk Lawrence Kestenbaum told CNN that ballots cannot be retrieved once they pass through the tabulator. Unlike absentee voting, ballots cast at in-person voting locations do not contain any information identifying a specific voter, making it impossible to determine which one belonged to a student, Kestenbaum said.

“Underneath the tab is the ballot box 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 was standard election procedure intended to maintain secrecy.

“The in-person ballot shall be placed in a tabulator or ballot box, mixed with other ballots. This is to maintain secrecy so that the vote cannot be later taken and confirmed who a particular pastor voted for,” said David Becker, a former Justice Department voting rights official and founder of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research.

After the charges were announced, Michigan GOP officials AND state legislators used the news to criticize Democrats for not requiring proof of citizenship to vote.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, an election law expert at Stetson University, said this was one of the “flaws” of secret ballot voting, which was introduced to prevent vote buying.

Earlier in U.S. history, different ballot colors were sometimes used for different political parties, making the process easier to interfere with. A secret ballot for in-person voting ensures that “no one will be able to link a specific vote to a specific voter,” Torres-Spelliscy said.

“It’s virtually impossible to pick out an incorrectly cast ballot 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 was an American citizen, which explains why election workers gave him a ballot.”