12 People Charged With Federal Election Crimes

The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Sept. 28 said it charged or obtained guilty pleas for 12 people across the United States for election-related crimes, including illegal immigrants who sought to vote or voted in elections.

A Haitian national who was on temporary protected status registered to vote and cast a ballot in 2024 in Florida, the DOJ said in a statement. Temporary protected status temporarily shields from deportation foreign nationals from certain countries.

That individual pleaded guilty to two counts of making a false claim of citizenship to vote and one count of voting by an alien, according to the statement.

Also in Florida, a 75-year-old illegal immigrant from Canada was charged with three counts of voting by an alien, having cast ballots in the 2022 midterms, the 2022 primary, and the 2024 elections despite the fact that she was not a U.S. citizen, federal officials also said.

Elsewhere, a Nigerian national was accused of making a false claim of U.S. citizenship, one count of falsely claiming U.S. citizenship to vote, one count of voting by an alien in a federal election, and one count of fraudulent election conduct, the DOJ said.

Charged in the U.S. District of Kansas, the man is accused of indicating that he was a U.S. citizen while registering to vote in 2010, and is also accused of voting in the November 2024 election, according to the statement.

In Utah, a former U.S. Postal Service worker, Damon Matai Seei, 34, was charged earlier this month with unlawful secretion, destruction, and delay of mail after allegedly throwing away 300 mail-in ballots sent to Utah registered voters. He pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Prosecutors said the former postal worker was supposed to deliver ballots and advertisements to residents in Eagle Mountain, Utah, for the state’s primary election in June. Seei was accused of throwing some of the mail, including the ballots, into a dumpster in a local church parking lot.

In a written statement quoted in court filings, Seei said he felt overwhelmed that day by the quantity of mail and tossed out advertisements so he could focus on other deliveries.

The DOJ also said on Sept. 28 that a 51-year-old Mexican woman who is a green card holder was charged with one count of voting by an alien in a federal election after records showed that she was registered to vote in October 2020, and later voted in the November 2024 election. The woman used her Texas driver’s license as a form of identification to register to vote, the department stated.

Other guilty pleas were secured, and charges were brought by federal prosecutors in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Hawaii, officials said.

Since taking office last year, President Donald Trump’s administration has sought to bolster election-related security, although courts have blocked some of the measures.

However, the Supreme Court on Sept. 25 ruled that the Trump administration can use an immigration database to verify the citizenship of voters.

A block on the administration’s use of that database, a 6–3 majority of justices wrote, “inhibits the Federal Government’s efforts to assist state and local agencies.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.