North Carolina Man Sentenced to Prison for Illegal Voting as Noncitizen

A noncitizen was sentenced to prison June 1 for illegally voting in North Carolina elections, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.

The defendant, identified in the Justice Department release as an alien unlawfully present in the United States, cast ballots in multiple elections in the state. The sentencing occurred in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.

The case affects the integrity of North Carolina's voter rolls and election administration. Federal law prohibits noncitizens from registering to vote or casting ballots in any federal, state or local election. North Carolina's voter registration form requires applicants to affirm under penalty of perjury that they are U.S. citizens.

The sentence changes the prior state in which the individual remained free after discovery of the illegal votes. The new state is incarceration in federal prison. The exact term of imprisonment was not detailed in the department's release announcing the June 1 sentencing.

Downstream, the conviction requires election officials in the affected North Carolina counties to review registration records and ballots tied to the defendant. It triggers mandatory notification to the North Carolina State Board of Elections under protocols for suspected illegal voting.

Federal prosecutors must now report the case to the Election Assistance Commission as part of national tallies on voting fraud prosecutions. The Department of Homeland Security gains additional grounds to pursue removal proceedings against the defendant upon completion of the criminal sentence.

This is the latest conviction secured by the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina in a series of noncitizen voting cases. The department has pursued similar prosecutions in multiple states since 2021 under 18 U.S.C. § 611, which carries penalties of up to one year in prison for voting by an alien, and related statutes prohibiting false statements on voter registration forms.

Primary sources: U.S. Department of Justice