cross-posted from: https://piefed.blahaj.zone/c/[email protected]/p/1038008/justice-department-charges-more-than-2-dozen-in-california-sweep-targeting-alleged
Federal authorities charged more than two dozen foreign nationals Monday in California as part of a statewide sweep targeting people who officials say have illegally registered and voted in U.S. elections.
The arrests are part of a Trump administration effort to root out noncitizen voting ahead of next month’s midterm elections, even though data shows that the problem is incredibly rare, difficult to prove and has not been shown to change the outcome of races.
They also reflect a further escalation in a simmering voter roll fight between the federal government and California that came into focus last week when the Justice Department sued the state and later warned that local election workers who knowingly process or tabulate ballots submitted by noncitizen voters are at risk of investigation and potential prosecution.
The Justice Department said the 28 people who were charged as part of a sweep dubbed Operation Protect the Vote are lawful permanent residents — but not U.S. citizens who are permitted to legally vote. They are charged with crimes including making false statements on a naturalization application and submitting fraudulent voter registrations.
“This causes real damage to real elections and real damage to American citizens,” Trent McCotter, the acting deputy attorney general at the Justice Department, said during a news conference in Los Angeles to announce the charges.
Much more in the article.
The arrests are part of a Trump administration effort to root out noncitizen voting
I get the media but is everyone here really missing the point of this? It’s not about noncitizen voting. They are saying “if you’re a minority be careful, you may be accused of illegal voting”. They want to scare the minority voters into sitting this one out.
If the best they could do was 28 in California (the most populous state) you know that shit is barely happening at all. You’d have better luck hunting for gold.
And these are accusations. In reality it’s probably single digits.
28 alleged and they’ve been lying about 80% of the time they’ve come to court lately so that’s more like 5 people who arguably could have committed a crime and the verbiage is probably going to rule out conviction on the rest.
And probably people Who were just confused about registering to vote.
I bet they got their driver’s license renewed and the DMV clerk offered to register them to vote and they agreed.
Probably something like that.
Right?
Also, how many of them really weren’t citizens? We can’t really trust the Justice Department at this point. And we know from past experience that a lot of their claims about “violent fascist communist atheist terrorists” assaulting poor widdle innocent ICE officers were complete bullshit. And that some of the supposed illegal immigrants they picked up turned out to be American citizens who happened to have tanned or dark skin. So it stands to reason they are wrong on at least some of these cases too.
And how many of them voted for Democrats? In the past in other states, the large majority of the (admittedly very small) number of fraudulent voters voted for the GOP.
This is like how DOGE claimed to find millions of dead people getting social security payments, and then it turned out they were only looking at one set of raw data before it’s joined with other data when payments are made: https://apnews.com/article/social-security-payments-deceased-false-claims-doge-ed2885f5769f368853ac3615b4852cf7
When you have an agency who comes in with the intention of making a big headline that Trump can run with, they are going to overlook things so that things fit the narrative.
Ah, but you see it’s enough to create some sound bites for Fox News about “voter fraud found in California”.
They just mad we keep catching Republican voter fraud. 28 also looks like a bazillion to MAGA.
More than the fingers and toes on most MAGA supporters.
18 USC sec. 611 is a federal law that makes it a crime for a non-citizen to vote. But a federal judge in another district ruled that 611 is unconstitutional, because the constitution gives states the power to decide who can vote, subject to constraints (age 18, women, poll taxes, etc.)
Nothing in the constitution says you have to be a US citizen to vote in a federal election. That’s just a rule that every state has adopted.
So I’m interested in whether they have actually charged 611 here or not.
Wow that’s fascinating, I had no idea.
Sounds like something states should be thinking about approving.
There are dozens of us!
