AKRON, OH (AP) Ohio’s attorney general and secretary of state announced investigations into possible voter fraud prior to the November presidential election, including individuals suspected of voting despite not being residents of the United States.
It came at the same time that the Republican Party launched a nationwide messaging campaign warning that thousands of voters who were not eligible would cast ballots.
In a statement at the time, Republican Attorney General Dave Yost declared that the right to vote was sacred. It is illegal to vote if you are not a citizen of the United States, regardless of whether you believed that you were eligible to do so. We’ll hold you responsible.
Their efforts ultimately resulted in only a few cases. Over the course of ten years, prosecutors have obtained indictments against nine individuals for voting as noncitizens, and one of them was later discovered to have passed away, out of the 621 criminal referrals for voter fraud that Secretary of State Frank LaRose forwarded to the attorney general. That sum represents a very small portion of the tens of millions of ballots that were cast throughout that time, as well as Ohio’s 8 million registered voters.
The result and the accounts of some of the people currently facing charges highlight the discrepancy between the rhetoric surrounding noncitizen voting in Ohio and the rest of the United States and the reality, which is that it rarely occurs, is detected and prosecuted when it does, and does not occur as part of a coordinated effort to rig elections.
Over the past two weeks, the Associated Press has been to both virtual and in-person court hearings for three of the Ohio defendants. In each case, individuals with strong communal ties took independent action, frequently believing they were entitled to vote. They are now in danger of being deported and charged with felonies.
Nicholas Fontaine, a 32-year-old Akron precision sheet metal worker, is one of them. In October, he was charged with one count of illegal voting, which is a fourth-degree felony.
At the age of two, Fontaine, a permanent resident of Canada, immigrated to the United States with his mother and sister. Due to claims that he cast ballots in the 2016 and 2018 elections, he might be imprisoned and deported.
He remembers being contacted about voting registration on the street while he was a college student.
According to Fontaine’s interview, “I believe that in my early adolescent mind, I thought, Well, I have to sign up for the draft, I should be able to vote.”
Among the several groups of immigrants who are required to register for a possible military draft through the Selective Service but are not able to exercise their right to vote are permanent residents like Fontaine.
According to Fontaine, the municipal board of elections sent him a postcard in 2016 with his polling station information. He cast his ballot without any problems. Before getting his ballot, he even presented his ID.
No issues. “I went in, cast my ballot, and turned in my voter paperwork,” he stated. There was no such thing as “Hey, there’s a problem here” or “There’s something here.” Here is your ballot, or paper.
Fontaine claimed that in 2018 or 2019, a representative from the Department of Homeland Security came to his house, informed him that his votes in 2016 and 2018 had been unlawful, and cautioned him against casting another ballot. He never has after then. His indictment this fall was unexpected in part because of this.
He said that he missed his court appearance in early December and was unaware that he had been charged until an AP reporter knocked on his door following the planned hearing to alert him of the accusations.
According to Fontaine, his American stepfather instilled in him the importance of voting during his upbringing. He declared that he would never have purposefully cast an unlawful ballot.
“I have spoken to Americans about voting, and I don’t know anyone who would consider voting illegally for any reason,” he stated. Why would you do that, for example? That isn’t logical. There is no doubt that they will discover the truth. Additionally, it is converting one vote into two. Can you get a hundred even if you do that? How many millions of Americans are voters?
Local authorities in the county where Fontaine is accused would not have had any means of independently confirming his immigrant status, according to Faith Lyon, the election director for Portage County. According to her, there is a tick on every voter registration form that asks if a person is a citizen of the United States and states that they cannot vote unless they are.
According to their attorneys, the defendants in two previous cases involving illicit voting that are currently pending in Ohio courts did not select that box because they thought that if they were in fact ineligible, the election board would not register them. They are currently facing criminal charges for voting, despite having registered nonetheless.
One of those defendants, 40-year-old Fiona Allen, sobbed outside a Cleveland courtroom the day before Fontaine’s planned hearing after hearing the charges against her from a public defender.
Nine years ago, she relocated from Jamaica to the United States. Prosecutors claim that Allen voted in 2020, 2022, and 2023 after submitting the voter registration form and becoming registered. At the courthouse, the mother of two, who has a son in the U.S. Navy, and her husband of 13 years, a naturalized citizen and military member, chose not to remark. Allen entered a not guilty plea.
Last week, Lorinda Miller, 78, also appeared before a judge via Zoom. She was apprehensive about being charged.
Miller, who came to the United States from Canada as a youngster, is related to an indigenous group, according to her lawyer, who also provided her with documents proving her North American citizenship. That, she was informed, was enough to enable her to register to vote. According to attorney Reid Yoder, she has even been called for jury service.
Miller entered a not guilty plea to the allegations, and he intends to proceed with the trial.
Yoder stated, “I firmly believe that the integrity of the vote should be preserved.” The goal of the law, in my opinion, is to penalize those who have cheated the system. I don’t have that client. You must be aware of your actions in order to truly scam the system. That is not at all like my client. Her participation stems from her belief in the sanctity of the vote. She was unaware that she was acting improperly.
According to Jay Young, senior director of the Voting and Democracy Program for Common Cause, the Ohio cases are just one illustration of the reality that the narrative that large numbers of immigrants without the required legal documents registered to vote and then cast ballots is simply not supported by the facts.
According to him, the state periodically purges its voter rolls, and voting illegally as a noncitizen has harsh consequences, including fines, jail time, and deportation.
He claimed that the most persistent false narrative we witnessed during this election was about the role of these immigrants and their ability to influence the outcome. However, he said that it had a purpose: to maintain national division and foster mistrust of the electoral process.
“You can justify it by telling yourself that you have an excuse if your guy or you as a candidate doesn’t win,” he said.
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This article was written by Gary Fields of the Associated Press in Washington.
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