A Chinese national is accused of illegally voting in Michigan, authorities say

Marshall Cohen, Pamela Brown, Zachary Cohen and Yahya Abu-Ghazala, CNN

(CNN) — Michigan prosecutors have charged a Chinese national with voter fraud and perjury after he allegedly cast a ballot in the 2024 election, authorities announced Wednesday.

Sources familiar with the matter told CNN that the 19-year-old Chinese man who allegedly voted is a student who lives in Ann Arbor, home to the University of Michigan. Authorities said the man is not a US citizen and therefore cannot vote in federal elections.

The announcement from Michigan’s secretary of state and attorney general, as well as local prosecutors in Ann Arbor, comes as former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies spread concern on mass voting of non-citizens. Experts say illegal non-citizen voting is extremely rare, and when it does occur, it is usually detected quickly.

According to a source familiar with the situation, the Chinese man – a student at the University of Michigan – voted on Sunday and later that day contacted local election officials in an attempt to return the ballot.

The man registered to vote at the polling station on Sunday, the source said. He used his college ID and other documents to prove he lived in Ann Arbor when filling out voter registration forms that day, the source said. This was first reported by the Detroit News newspaper details

The suspect is in the US legally, the source added. If convicted, he could potentially be deported over the incident, legal experts say.

“Investigations in many states and across the country have found no evidence of large numbers of noncitizens registering to vote. A non-citizen participates in voting even less often. When this happens, we take it extremely seriously,” said Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Washtenaw County District Attorney Eli Savitt, both Democrats.

They also said that “any non-citizen who attempts to vote fraudulently in Michigan will put themselves at great risk and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Michigan investigators are still looking into whether it was an isolated incident, an accident or possibly part of China’s attempt to meddle in the 2024 election, and federal investigators are also looking into the matter, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.

This was announced by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who is also a Democrat statement that her office had launched an “independent parallel investigation” into the situation.

Authorities have not identified the Chinese student accused of voting in the election. He is charged with attempting to vote illegally and perjury, both felonies.

It turns out that the student vote cannot be canceled after the fact and will be counted.

Washtenaw County Clerk Lawrence Kestenbaum told CNN that ballots cannot be retrieved after they have been tabulated. Unlike mail-in ballots, ballots submitted at in-person polling stations do not contain any identifying information about an individual voter, making it impossible to tell which one belongs to a student, Kestenbaum said.

“There’s a ballot box under the tabulator, and all the ballots — they all look the same … there’s no way to go back and undo it,” Kestenbaum said in an interview.

Experts say this is standard election procedure to preserve secrecy.

“The ballot for personal voting is placed in a tabulator or box together with other ballots. It’s done to preserve secrecy so you can’t go to the ballot later and confirm who a particular priest voted for,” said David Becker, a former Justice Department voting rights fellow and founder of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research.

After the charges were announced, Michigan GOP operatives and state legislators seized on the news to criticize Democrats for not requiring proof of citizenship to vote.

Ciara Torres-Spellisi, an election law expert at Stetson University, said that was one of the “disadvantages” of the secret ballot, which was put in place to prevent vote-buying.

Earlier in US history, different colored ballots were sometimes used for different political parties, which made it easier to interfere with the process. The secret ballot for in-person voting ensures that “no one can track a particular vote of a particular voter,” Torres-Spellisi said.

“It’s almost impossible to pull out a miscast ballot because it looks like any other ballot cast by an eligible voter,” CNN contributor Torres-Spellisi said, adding that a Chinese citizen who voted in Michigan “sworn under penalty of perjury that he was an American citizen, so that explains why the poll workers gave him a ballot.”