Illegal immigrant vote-fraud cases rare in Arizona
Arizona has spent enormous amounts of time and money waging war against voter fraud, citing the specter of illegal immigrants’ casting ballots.
State officials from Gov. Jan Brewer to Attorney General Tom Horne to Secretary of State Ken Bennett swear it’s a problem.
At an August news conference, Horne and Bennett cited voter-fraud concerns as justification for continuing a federal-court fight over state voter-ID requirements. And some Republican lawmakers have used the same argument to defend a package of controversial new election laws slated to go before voters in November 2014.
But when state officials are pushed for details, the numbers of actual cases and convictions vary and the descriptions of the alleged fraud become foggy or based on third-hand accounts.
An examination of voter-fraud cases in Maricopa County shows those involving illegal immigrants are nearly non-existent, and have been since before the changes to voter-ID requirements were enacted in 2004.
In response to an Arizona Republic records request, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office provided a list of 21 criminal cases
since January 2005 in which the suspect was charged with a felony related to voter fraud. A search of court records found 13 other cases.
Of the 34 Maricopa County cases,
two of the suspects were in the country illegally and 12 were not citizens but living in the U.S. legally, court records showed. One of the suspect’s legal-residency status was unclear from the records.
The non-citizens came from around the world — Indonesia, Canada, Mexico, Yugoslavia, the Philippines and Thailand. Most had been living legally in the U.S. for decades. Several stated in court documents that they thought they were permitted to vote because they were legal permanent residents of the United States.
None was convicted of a felony or given any jail time. A couple of the cases were dismissed; the other suspects pleaded guilty to misdemeanors and served a few months of probation.
Eighteen of the cases involved convicted felons who had lost the right to vote. In several of the cases, the felons told the court no one had ever explained to them that they no longer could vote even after serving their time. One said he was sent an early ballot in the mail and thought he was permitted to vote.
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