Voters fill out ballots at a polling station in Concord, New Hampshire, Nov. 3, 2020.
Federal prosecutors in North Carolina revealed Friday (March 19) that 24 more people have been charged in an ongoing investigation into election fraud, including two accused of illegally voting in the 2016 presidential election.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for The Eastern District of North Carolina, in a list of defendants obtained by The Epoch Times Gabriela Guzman-Miguel, 26, and Jose Abraham Navarro, 42, are accused of voting without legal status, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for The Eastern District of North Carolina said in a list of defendants obtained by The Epoch Times. The list of defendants includes both foreign nationals and immigrants.
Other defendants are accused of lying about their U.S. citizenship in order to register to vote. Some are also suspected of naturalization fraud, misuse of visas, permits related to voter registration and other documents, officials said.
The defendants are from 15 countries, including Honduras, Iraq and Canada, among others. The alleged acts date back to the fall of 2019.
If convicted, the men face jail Time and fines of up to $350,000.
Each defendant is charged separately and there are no conspiracy charges, the prosecutor’s office said.
Robert Higdon, who not long ago headed the office, was active in investigating illegal voting cases in 2018 and issued subpoenas to the state Board of Elections and 44 county commissions for records.
The State Board of Elections called the subpoenas “overly broad, unreasonable and vague” and recommended that North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat, rescind the subpoenas.
Stein ultimately directed the Board of Elections to provide records on about 789 people registered to vote, far fewer than Trump‘s (Trump) appointee Higdon had requested.
Higdon announced charges in 2018 against 19 foreign nationals who voted in the 2016 election. in 2020, another U.S. attorney released election fraud charges against 19 others.
In a previous statement, Higdon said, “The right to vote is a valuable privilege enjoyed only by U.S. citizens. In federal elections, non-citizen voting dilutes and diminishes the value of the votes of U.S. citizens and places the decision-making power of American voters in the hands of those who do not have the power to make those choices.”
An audit conducted by the State Board of Elections after the 2016 election found that 41 people admitted to voting, even though they were not U.S. citizens. Another 61 people who may have voted illegally did not respond, while another 34 people identified in the audit provided proof of citizenship.
The audit report said, “The information obtained from noncitizens illustrates the complexity of this effort. Some non-citizens indicated that they were unaware that they were prohibited from voting. Interviews and evidence suggest that some noncitizens were misled by those responsible for voter registration. In at least one documented case, misled by local precinct officials.”
As an example, the report says, “A voter registrant in her seventies, who has lived in the United States for more than fifty years, believes she is already a U.S. citizen because she is married to one.”
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