A Chinese student at the University of Michigan, who is legally in the United States but is not a U.S. citizen, has been charged after illegally voting on Sunday.
According to a joint statement issued on Wednesday by Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Washtenaw County Prosecutor Eli Savit, the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office authorized criminal charges against a 19-year-old Chinese student who allegedly registered to vote on Sunday, signed a document claiming to be a U.S. citizen, and submitted a ballot.
“Only U.S. citizens can register and vote in our elections,” the Michigan officials said. “It is illegal to lie on any registration forms or voting applications about one’s citizenship status. Doing so is a felony.”
According to The Detroit News, the Chinese student later contacted the local clerk’s office and asked for his ballot back.
Andrew McCarthy, a former assistant U.S. attorney for New York’s Southern District, told Fox News that the Chinese non-citizen student’s vote is expected to still count in the 2024 election since there is no way for election officials to retrieve the ballot.
“The thing is, because of the imperative of voter secrecy, the ballot does not have an identifying PIN number or other kind of identifying information that would enable somebody afterward to figure out who voted for whom,” McCarthy said. “That’s our dedication to the secret ballot.”
McCarthy explained that once the ballot is processed through the tabulator, “it gets counted because there’s no way to go back and retrieve it.”
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According to The Detroit News, the 19-year-old student faces perjury charges for making a false statement on an affidavit to register to vote in Michigan. While the standard punishment for perjury is 15 years in prison, it is not yet clear what the punishment could be for this form of perjury. The Chinese student also faces charges for attempting to vote as an unauthorized elector, which can be punished with a $2,000 fine and up to four years in prison.
“We’re grateful for the swift action of the clerk in this case, who took the appropriate steps and referred the case to law enforcement,” Benson and Savit said in a joint statement. “We are also grateful to law enforcement for swiftly and thoroughly investigating this case. Anyone who attempts to vote illegally faces significant consequences, including but not limited to arrest and prosecution.”
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, also released a statement confirming that her office was conducting an “independent, parallel investigation” into the illegal voting incident.
Nessel said, “We take all allegations of voter fraud extremely seriously, and the public should expect nothing less.”
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