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Clarification, Oct. 14: This story has been updated to clarify what Cleta Mitchell wants the Commerce Department to do and her role in Trump’s 2020 call to the Georgia secretary of state.

Since being released early from prison in June, former Colorado election clerk Tina Peters has been granted extraordinary access to the halls of power in Washington.

Peters said she has traveled to Washington seven times, visited the White House at least twice, and met with senior officials at the Justice and Commerce departments — remarkable access for someone on parole after a 2024 felony conviction for tampering with voting machines in an attempt to show that the 2020 election was rigged against President Donald Trump.

She’s a high-profile example of a group of Trump supporters and conservative activists trying to lay out a roadmap for the president to follow. They are urging him to take more extreme steps to try and influence the outcome of an election that many polls suggest could end Republican control of Congress. But as the election closes in, the activists are now voicing increasing concerns that the president and his administration aren’t going to act on their ideas.

Peters isn’t shy about what she wants. The 71-year-old activist is pushing the Trump administration to use emergency powers before the November election to scrutinize voting machines across America, though that’s something most experts and lawyers say it can’t legally do.

“A lot of people would say that we just need to go rogue and declare this radical emergency and we need to shut everything down,” Peters said last week on an election activist livestream on Rumble. “The encouraging part is that there are already orders and laws in place that allow them to do what they need to do.”

Other conservative activists pushing for changes to election administration include:

• Cleta Mitchell, head of the Election Integrity Network and a Trump ally, who is pushing the Commerce Department to require a partial hand count of the election results because of potential national security risks with voting machines.
• Mike Lindell, a longtime Trump ally who has spent years promoting claims that voting machines were used to manipulate U.S. elections, who wants Trump to declare a national emergency and prevent the use of electronic voting machines in November.
• Peter Ticktin, a Florida attorney representing Peters and longtime Trump friend, who said Trump might have to declare martial law if the election results are in question.
• Steve Bannon, a longtime Trump ally and former White House chief strategist who hosts the influential right-wing podcast War Room, who has repeatedly urged Trump to use emergency powers to require voter identification at the polls and send ICE agents to polling places.
• James Mills, head of the Georgia State Election Board, who sent a letter last week urging the Trump administration to compel his state to make election software updates before the November election.

A wide array of lawyers, voting rights groups, civil rights leaders, and Democrats have denounced the ideas as an unconstitutional attack on the nation’s electoral process. But such criticisms haven’t deterred Trump from trying to advance a variety of proposals to impose more federal control over elections.

Federal courts have blocked Trump from advancing key pillars of two executive orders that would have transformed the U.S. Postal Service into a ballot regulation agency, eliminated grace periods for ballots arriving after Election Day, and required all people to provide documented proof of citizenship to register to vote.

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With most of his efforts at election oversight blocked, Trump has left open the possibility he might heed the calls of supporters urging him to take drastic action before November.

“Let me just say that stranger things have happened, OK?” Trump said in an August interview with Wayne Allyn Root on Real America’s Voice, responding to a question about declaring a national security emergency as a way to assert more authority over elections. “I’ll leave it at that.”

‘Sowing confusion, chaos and distrust’

The Trump administration has laid out an Election Day plan that includes dispatching 1,000 election monitors to look for any problems in key states, establishing FBI command posts across the nation, and military monitoring of potential cyber attacks from hostile nations. Pentagon officials have said they have no plans to send armed forces to polling places on Election Day. But the Trump administration has stopped short of foreclosing the possibility that ICE or armed federal agents could operate near or in polling places, a move that could cross legal lines.

Sean Morales-Doyle, senior director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program, said federal laws and precedent make it extremely unlikely that Trump would be able to take any meaningful steps to seize voting machines before the election. And that may not be the ultimate goal, he said.

“The point of this concerted campaign to undermine our elections from this administration is really not about changing the rules, because even they know the president lacks the authority,” said Morales-Doyle. “It is about sowing confusion, chaos and distrust and undermining public trust in our elections.”

Peters appears to be the person who has had the greatest access to Trump administration officials in recent months. Trump had lunch at the White House with Peters and Ticktin in late June, just four weeks after Peters was released from state prison. Peters returned for a second visit last week, Ticktin told Votebeat.

Mitchell and Peters have focused part of their efforts on persuading the Commerce Department to use what they said is existing authority over voting machines, which a letter from Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said introduces a national security risk because they contain parts from other nations, including China.

Mitchell argues that a national emergency declaration that Trump declared in 2019 gives the Commerce Department the power to compel election officials to conduct a partial hand count before certification. Earlier this year, Justice Department official Keith Olsen reportedly tried to get the Commerce Department to classify voting machine components as national security threats, which could lead to them being banned from use in the U.S. But investigators found no evidence to support the claims, Reuters reported, and the idea was scrapped.

Mitchell, in an interview with Votebeat, expressed frustration that the Trump administration has not placed enough importance on the concerns and blamed people working for the president for not doing enough to address election issues.

“I can call the president anytime I want to — and I have,” said Mitchell, who declined to say when she last spoke to Trump. “I told the president this: I wish that the people in your administration knew or cared as much about election integrity as you do.”

Neither the Commerce Department nor the White House responded to requests for comment.

Mitchell said she signs every message to administration officials with the same sign-off: Tick-tock.

That’s the same message Ticktin said he has been trying to convey.

“We are running out of time,” said Ticktin, who characterized the threat from Chinese-made parts in voting machines as akin to an act of war.

“This is getting serious enough and critical enough that it might even require, at some point, martial law,” said Ticktin. “People say: ‘Ticktin’s crazy.’ If I’m not crazy and what I am saying is true that China is attacking us in some way, well then we’re really in a state of belligerence with China and, sooner or later, it’s going to be too late to change things in a peaceful way.”

Ticktin suggested that federal forces could help seize voting machines in places where the count is in question, and potentially hand-count ballots.

Ticktin’s call represents the most extreme — and most unlikely — idea being pushed by election skeptics.

Mitchell, Peters, and others have been urging the administration to take more strategic steps to address their concerns.

A focal point for the group is Georgia, where Mills surprised members of the state elections board by sending off a letter urging the Trump administration to order major changes to the state’s voting equipment before the November election.

The letter asked the Justice Department to force state and county officials to install software updates before the November election. It also asked the Justice Department to prevent QR-code-based tabulation in Georgia and require Georgia to end its use of the codes in six months. But installing new software would require time, money and resources — all of which are in short supply for Georgia in the weeks leading up to the election.

Trump has long focused his ire on Georgia, where he lost the 2020 presidential election by fewer than 12,000 votes — less than 1% of the ballots cast. Mitchell joined Trump on a call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger after the election where the president pressed him to “find” him more than 11,000 votes, enough to change the outcome. Earlier this year, the FBI searched Fulton County’s election hub and seized more than 650 boxes, including ballots, from the 2020 election. The results in Georgia this fall will be pivotal to partisan control of the U.S. Senate.

Beyond Georgia, others like Bannon and Lindell keep pressing the president to issue a new national security declaration to prevent the use of electronic voting machines to tally votes at all.

“The president needs to completely declare a national emergency,” Lindell said. “The president can just make a national argument and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to go paper ballots, hand counting.’”

But making such a declaration wouldn’t allow Trump to ban voting machines or require states to count all ballots by hand. The Constitution grants the president limited control over elections, which are usually handled by state and local officials with direction from Congress.

At the end of the day, said Morales-Doyle, the most important thing voters can do is make plans to cast their ballots in ways they feel safe and secure.

“At this moment, when democracy has come under such unprecedented and pointed attacks, it is more important than ever that people invest in democracy and that do so in defiance of all this,” he said.

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

The post From martial law to banning voting machines, election skeptics urge Trump to take extreme action appeared first on Salon.com.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

This news analysis was originally distributed in Votebeat’s free weekly newsletter. Sign up to get future editions, including the latest reporting from Votebeat bureaus and curated news from other publications, delivered to your inbox every Saturday.

The U.S. Postal Service had enough problems even before President Donald Trump tried to transform the agency into a de facto election regulation hub that would have had the power to reject ballots heading to voters this November.

That plan was quashed by the Supreme Court after a tumultuous legal battle. But that hasn’t taken the spotlight off the Postal Service, which is still facing a lot of questions about how prepared it is to handle the massive flow of ballots moving around the country over the next four weeks.

The Postal Service has lost money for decades. Since 2007, the agency has lost $118 billion. Despite a mantra that “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night” would keep the mail from getting through, the Postal Service is charging customers more and delivering some mail more slowly. Things are so bad that the Postmaster General has warned that the agency could run out of cash early next year.

The problems are a concern for tens of millions of Americans expected to vote by mail in this November’s elections. This year, the challenges could be compounded by belt-tightening measures that could lead to more ballots being rejected if voters aren’t paying attention.

The so-called Regional Transportation Optimization plan the agency rolled out last year has reduced pickup times at more than 15,000 post offices that are more than 50 miles from a regional processing center. That means a ballot could sit in a local post office and not get a postmark until the following day.

For people dropping off their ballots at the last minute, that could mean the difference between their votes being counted or rejected. The problems are likely to have the biggest impact on rural areas, which tend to be more likely to vote for Republicans.

Oregon has been an early case study in how the system works — or doesn’t. Oregon, which was the first state to shift to voting entirely by mail in 1998, was part of the Postal Service pilot project testing the consolidation process. The results were not encouraging. The Postal Service’s own audit found that performance declined and complaints increased.

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Most importantly for voters, Oregon has seen an increase in ballots being rejected because they weren’t postmarked as required by Election Day. During the primary election this past May, more than 7,300 ballots that might have been counted when they came in after Election Day were rejected because they didn’t have a proper postmark, amounting to a 13% rejection rate, up from 9.5% in 2024.

That set off some alarm bells in Oregon, which is trying to address the problems and ensure that fewer ballots are rejected this November.

Leading the charge is Secretary of State Tobias Read, a Democrat who has worked to expand the state’s ballot drop box system, which operates independently of the Postal Service. Oregon has more than 320 drop boxes. More than 60% of all Oregon voters used drop boxes in 2024, but it’s much easier for people in urban areas to use them than those in rural areas, where it can take an hour or more to reach one. Read just got state lawmakers to add another 20 for the November election to help expand the system’s reach.

Read is so worried about postal delays that he’s encouraging people to send ballots back a week before the election or instead plan to secure a postmark or vote another way.

“We can’t count on it,” said Read, referring to the Postal Service. “It might work, but I don’t want anyone to be taking a chance with their ballot.”

Voters who send their ballots back close to Election Day should go into the post office and ask workers to manually postmark the ballot, Read said.

“It’s not that the Postal Service is something you should avoid,” he said. “Just do it early if you’re going to use the mail.”

The Postal Service itself is also encouraging voters to send their ballots back well before Election Day to ensure they are counted. The agency has a 90-second public service announcement on its website urging people to “mail early.” For some voters, the agency suggests that people send their ballots in at least a week before the deadline.

In Washington, Secretary of State Steve Hobbs is going further and urging people to send in their ballots 10 days before the deadlines to ensure that they aren’t rejected. The problem with ballots being rejected because of late postmarks skyrocketed in some Washington counties by more than 300% between the 2024 primary and the 2026 primary.

Like Read, Hobbs, a Democrat, is encouraging people to use a drop box to return their ballots – and make sure they make a plan to ensure their vote is counted.

“If you’re going to mail, you better do it right away,” he said. “Don’t wait.”

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

The post ‘Mail early’: Election officials urge people to get ballots in pronto amid Postal Service slowdowns appeared first on Salon.com.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

In the run-up to the November election, federal officials have sent conflicting signals about whether law enforcement agents could show up at polling places.

FBI Director Kash Patel declined to rule out deploying FBI agents to voting sites. The Department of Homeland Security has said ICE does not plan to patrol polling places, while leaving open the possibility that agents could respond to threats or serve warrants nearby. The Justice Department, meanwhile, has said it will continue sending federal personnel to polling locations as part of its election-monitoring efforts.

The mixed messages are already shaping preparations around the country: In Wisconsin, election officials are being trained on how to respond if armed federal agents appear at polling places, while in Michigan, the attorney general’s office has prepared agents, state police officials and legal filings to respond quickly to election-related incidents.

The uncertainty has left election officials preparing for scenarios they may never face and voters unsure what federal presence, if any, to expect in November.

A recent University of San Diego poll found that 40% of Americans said they think it’s likely that ICE agents will show up at the polls, and a third said their presence would reduce their trust in elections.

Federal law sharply restricts the deployment of armed federal agents at polling places, and experts say election officials have tools to respond if agents show up in violation of those restrictions.

Federal law prohibits U.S. officials from sending or keeping “troops or armed men at any place where a general or special election is held,” with only narrow exceptions for when those people are voting or if their presence is necessary “to repel armed enemies of the United States.”

Another federal law prohibits voter intimidation, with up to a yearlong prison sentence for anybody who intimidates, threatens, or coerces somebody else with the purpose of interfering with another person’s right to vote.

“It’s low likelihood, and it’s certainly impossible that any sort of federal presence could be there at every polling site in America,” said Aaron Blacksberg, federal policy counsel at the Institute for Responsive Government. “But without knowing for certain, people are concerned.”

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Blacksberg said that voters especially worried about the possibility of federal law enforcement at the polls could vote by mail, drop their ballot at a drop box or or use another alternative voting option available in their jurisdiction.

The prohibition on deploying armed federal personnel to polling places is a criminal statute, said Jonathan Diaz, director of voting advocacy and partnerships for the Campaign Legal Center. “The person who orders the agents or officers to the polls also would face criminal liability for doing that,” he said.

In most jurisdictions, Diaz added, election officials are empowered to remove people from the polls if they’re causing a disruption or violating polling place rules, and they can work with local law enforcement to enforce those rules. If a voter sees federal agents at polling places in a manner that may be illegal, Diaz said, they should alert their local election officials.

Federal agents could also end up near a polling place for reasons unrelated to the election.

That happened in May, when a traffic stop led to a car being pulled over near a polling place, and ICE agents showed up to question the driver. Local law enforcement quickly showed up to tell the federal agents to leave the premises. County officials said voters weren’t questioned and polling places ran normally despite the brief ICE presence nearby.

Courts have confronted voter intimidation before

There’s little precedent for the possibility of federal agents at the polls, but courts have addressed other efforts involving law-enforcement personnel at polling places.

For example, in 1981 the Democratic National Committee took the Republican National Committee to court for allegedly seeking to revoke the registrations of minority voters in New Jersey and enlisting off-duty officers to intimidate voters by standing at the polls in heavily Black and Latino precincts. The Republican Party entered a consent decree that lasted over three decades, heavily restricting its planned election security efforts.

The decree is no longer in effect, but it could be cited in future cases “if something really grotesque were to happen in the area of voter intimidation by people looking like law enforcement” said Lorraine Minnite, a Rutgers University political science professor who served as an expert witness in the case.

She also said voters should feel confident that election officials are prepared to respond to federal interference.

Recent Votebeat reporting illustrates that around the country, top state prosecutors, secretaries of state and local election officials are preparing for scenarios like ICE showing up at the polls and preparing legal filings in advance. Some have rehearsed how to respond if federal agents seek access to polling places, ballots or voting equipment, while others are lining up attorneys and law enforcement who could act quickly.

The prospect of federal agents at polling places is already being litigated.

In September, nine groups filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and several other agencies and officials over statements the groups say amount to threats to deploy federal agents to polling places. The groups argue such a deployment would violate federal law, including a section of the Voting Rights Act that bans voter intimidation. They are seeking an injunction blocking federal agents from being used in ways that unlawfully intimidate voters.

The Justice Department, which is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, has rejected its premise, arguing that federal officials have never said they would send law enforcement to polling locations. The Department of Homeland Security has said ICE is not planning operations targeting polling places. The case is still in its preliminary stages.

Local police have a different role at polling places.

Unlike federal law enforcement, local police routinely coordinate with election officials around polling place security.

In many cases, Diaz said, local law enforcement are at the polls at the request of election officials, who have received extensive harassment and threats since the 2020 election. Law enforcement often coordinates with election officials to keep officials and voters safe without their presence intimidating voters, he said.

“It’s far more normal for a county official or a state official from a law enforcement agency to be at or near the polls because usually they’re working with election officials, versus federal law enforcement, who have no role in the election process,” he said.

But even a lawful local police presence “can raise concerns about voter intimidation.”

In August, the Sheboygan County Sheriff’s Department in Wisconsin said they would be sending some deputies to polling locations to ensure a safe and secure election. That drew criticism from the ACLU of Wisconsin and other groups. The sheriff responded that deputies had conducted brief and routine polling place visits for years.

A few days later, legal groups sent the sheriff a letter saying that while local law enforcement can play a helpful role in elections, their presence can intimidate voters — and that intimidation may violate state and federal law.

Even when local law enforcement is working with election officials, officers are subject to the same voter intimidation restrictions as anybody else, Diaz said.

“It’s important for them to behave responsibly and transparently with election officials and with the public to reassure voters that they’ll be able to vote safely,” he said, adding that officers should carefully avoid inadvertently creating an intimidating presence for voters.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

The post What to expect at the polling place amid uncertainty over federal agents appeared first on Salon.com.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

This news analysis was originally distributed in Votebeat’s free weekly newsletter. Sign up to get future editions, including the latest reporting from Votebeat bureaus and curated news from other publications, delivered to your inbox every Saturday.

Sometimes it seems like the 2020 presidential election never ends.

Trying to prove that he actually won that race has been an animating feature of President Donald Trump’s second term, even though audits, investigations, and court cases have all found that he lost to former President Joe Biden.

Trump’s obsession has famously become a litmus test within the Republican Party. But a new analysis shared first with Votebeat suggests that, six years later, the issue may be losing some of its animating power for candidates.

States United Action, a nonpartisan nonprofit that supports state officials in protecting elections, examined the number of people running for statewide office or Congress who backed President Donald Trump’s false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, refused to certify the legitimate results of that election, or attempted to overturn those results. The group categorizes those candidates as “election deniers.”

The group found that the number of such candidates fell by about 30% between 2022 and 2026, dropping from 285 to 197.

The candidates this year on the States United Action list includes contestants for governor in key swing states, attorneys general, U.S. senators, members of the House of Representatives, and, perhaps most importantly, secretaries of state. If they win, it would give them expanded control over the levers of electoral power for what is expected to be a contentious 2028 presidential election.

Right now, according to States United Action, 27 current statewide officeholders on their list have some oversight of elections. This November, 33 candidates for statewide office are on the ballot across the country.

If history is any guide, most of them are likely to lose. Since 2021, according to the group’s analysis, fewer than one in four of such candidates have won a statewide office.

“We know that election denial is a losing campaign strategy and that Americans are tired of hearing the same old lies,” said Joanna Lydgate, CEO of States United Action. But, she added, “the threat they pose to our elections and the rule of law is very real: The candidates who win in 2026 will run our elections in 2028 and serve as a check on Trump’s power in the meantime.”

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Such candidates are on the ballot in almost all of the swing states expected to be pivotal to the 2028 presidential race, including Arizona, Nevada, and Wisconsin.

One of the most closely watched races is the one for Arizona secretary of state, where incumbent Democrat Adrian Fontes faces Alexander Kolodin, an attorney who helped bring unsuccessful lawsuits challenging Arizona’s 2020 election results and was later disciplined by the State Bar over election-related litigation.

Kolodin, who did not respond to a request for comment, rejects the “election denier” label. On the campaign trail, he has sought to highlight his work in the Arizona Legislature, noting that several of his election reform bills have passed with bipartisan support, though those largely came out of negotiations around must-pass pieces of legislation.

Meanwhile, Kolodin would not say at a recent debate whether Arizona’s elections were safe and secure.

The persistent attacks on America’s electoral system are starting to take a toll on voter confidence. Recent polls have shown shrinking confidence in the country’s elections. For example, a recent University of California, San Diego survey found that less than half Americans — just 49% — thought the November election would be free and fair.

Pew found less of a partisan gap than in the past, though cautioned that Democrats and Republicans have different reasons for their dwindling confidence.

Thad Kousser, a UC-San Diego political science professor, said that electing election skeptics to office doesn’t necessarily mean that they will throw a wrench into the process.

“The real question is not what people have said about past elections but whether the elections that they run are going to be rooted in reality, informed by the experts in their teams,” he said. “If people come into office and take an open and honest look, that’s going to be very different than if they came in with their mind made up, ignored the evidence and pushed for policies that are not rooted in reality.”

One recent case of that arose in South Dakota, where outgoing Secretary of State Monae Johnson entered office as a skeptic of the electoral office and is leaving as a defender of its integrity. Johnson, a Republican, is endorsing a Democrat to replace her in the fall election after feuding with her party over the issue.

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

The post Are Trump’s claims the 2020 election was stolen losing steam? appeared first on Salon.com.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

For years, Khalwinder Singh Bhengura lived an unassuming life in Arlington, Texas, where the 69-year-old Indian immigrant works a graveyard shift preparing passenger meals for an airline catering company.

Bhengura moved to the U.S. and spent 18 years working toward becoming a legal resident, securing his green card in 2022. It was a cause for celebration in the Bhengura family. Then things took an unexpected turn.

In 2024, according to a federal indictment, Bhengura registered to vote and cast a ballot in the November presidential election, even though he’s not allowed to do so without being an American citizen.

Bhengura’s case is part of a Trump administration campaign to prioritize prosecuting noncitizen voters.

On Sept. 10, federal authorities arrested Bhengura and charged him with voting as an alien in a federal election and making a false statement about being a U.S. citizen in order to register to vote. That makes him one of 70 people the Trump administration has charged in voting fraud cases this year, according to Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter.

The list includes noncitizens from all corners of the globe, residing in all corners of the U.S. It features everyone from a 20-year-old college student from the Philippines accused of voting in Hawaii to a 39-year-old New Jersey restaurant owner from France. And an examination of the defendants and the filings in their cases found no sign of any organized efforts to cheat the American electoral system.

Votebeat reviewed Justice Department press releases and news accounts since June 1st and identified 41 recent cases involving noncitizens accused of voting. At least 23 defendants are legal residents holding green cards. Those charged range in age from 19 to 73 and come from at least 18 different countries, including Russia, Mexico, Australia, Israel, and Nigeria. Eight of the cases involved undocumented immigrants. About half of the cases come from Texas and New Jersey, with others popping up in a dozen other states, from Alaska to Louisiana.

Lawyers for most of the defendants did not respond to requests for comment. The list contains an eclectic assortment of alleged voter fraud cases. For example, one suspect in Massachusetts is accused of falsely impersonating his landlord to vote as part of a long-running feud between the two Chinese nationals.

The Justice Department has also charged American citizens in connection with the crackdown on fraudulent voting. One Pennsylvania man is accused of voting in both Alaska and Pennsylvania in the November 2024 presidential election. A city manager in Oklahoma is accused of signing voter registration forms for 11 residents.

But most of the cases involve immigrants like Bhengura who were on the pathway to U.S. citizenship when they voted in elections over the past decade. Bhengura’s lawyer says he acknowledged voting, but many of the cases involve nonresidents who secured their green cards, voted in elections, and then denied doing so when they were filling out paperwork or doing interviews to get their American citizenship, according to the legal filings.

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Joshua Ferrer, an assistant professor of government at American University, said many legal residents charged with improperly voting don’t realize they weren’t supposed to do so.

“It’s likely most of this is the result of confusion on the part of voters or election officials,” Ferrer said.

The fact that there are no indications that these voters were connected as part of any larger scheme “is another sign that the president’s claims of widespread voter fraud aren’t true,” he added.

Bhengura’s case raises a number of unanswered questions. Federal prosecutors said Bhengura registered to vote in 2024 when he applied for a driver’s license. But Texas law requires proof of citizenship or lawful presence to get a license, so it’s unclear how he could have been registered to vote if he had provided the documentation.

Knox, Bhengura’s attorney, defended him as “an honest, hard-working taxpayer and proud U.S. resident. He is terrified to face the government of the same nation that promised liberty and freedom. He prays that justice will prevail.”

Carol Lam, who served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California under President George W. Bush, questioned the Justice Department’s choice to prosecute these people. In her opinion, the government shouldn’t try to deport green card holders who didn’t know they couldn’t vote until they became American citizens.

“Our justice system was not created to terrorize people,” she said. “I think voting in national elections when you are not a citizen is a bad thing, but how you deal with these things is the question. If there is good evidence that the person didn’t intend to vote, that would be a slap-on-the-wrist kind of situation, and it’s instead being used to leverage people to be deported.”

Lam acknowledged that every administration has the leeway to decide what crimes to prioritize. But she questioned the Trump administration’s decision to devote so much time and energy to cases like Bhengura’s.

“Taking a 69-year-old grandfather with a green card with no apparent intent to violate the law who may have voted based on bad information and using it as a jumping-off point to deport a person would be at the bottom of my pile,” she said. “We had suspects who actually committed acts of violence, so there were so many more cases where life and limb were actually at stake.”

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

The post Alleged noncitizen voters targeted by feds from 18 different countries, mostly green card holders appeared first on Salon.com.