The U.S. Department of Justice announced charges Monday against 28 California legal permanent residents over alleged irregularities in registering to vote and, in some cases, casting ballots. Eleven were arrested. The operation comes two weeks before the midterm elections and accompanies a legal dispute that could affect the handling of thousands of ballots.
Federal authorities grouped the cases under Operation Protect the Vote. All the defendants are permanent residents, a status known as a green card: it allows them to live and work legally in the country, but does not grant citizenship or the right to vote in federal elections. The charges are allegations that have yet to be resolved, not convictions.
Some of the alleged crimes, including fraudulent voter registration and false statements on naturalization applications, can carry up to five years in prison. Not all the defendants are alleged to have voted; therefore, the number of people charged is not equivalent to the number of votes allegedly cast illegally.
The dispute over more than 20 thousand registrations
In a separate matter from the criminal case, the Justice Department asked a federal judge to set aside ballots linked to a list of more than 20 thousand people whose citizenship it questions, pending verification of their eligibility. The department says the 28 defendants appear on that list. The request does not mean a court has already authorized those votes to be set aside.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber questioned the list’s accuracy and defended the state’s safeguards to ensure that only U.S. citizens can register. She also argued that treating those people as ineligible unless they prove otherwise would violate federal restrictions on purging voter rolls before an election.
Governor Gavin Newsom rejected the offensive and characterized it as an attempt to suppress votes. The charges announced do not, by themselves, prove that widespread election fraud occurred. For voters included on the list, the immediate issue in the dispute is whether their ballots can be counted without additional verification required by the federal government, a measure California is challenging.
Image: Gavin Newsom, governor of California, in an 2011 file photo.
