Illegals charged for voting in presidential election

Three illegal aliens in Illinois were indicted on felony charges for voting in the 2016 election.

The clerk's office of Lake County, north of Chicago, discovered the alleged crimes, charging three illegal aliens with perjury for misrepresenting their citizenship. Two other local residents were charged with voting twice, the Chicago Tribune reported.

The charges against the five local residents began with information uncovered by the Lake County clerk’s office, and then the cases were developed through an investigation by the Lake County state’s attorney’s office.

Marcelo Villaruz and his wife, Gina Villaruz of Beach Park, Illinois, and Yvette Yust of Waukegan were charged with 3 felonies, which carry a potential sentence of probation or two to five years in prison upon conviction.

WND reported in June a study concluded that as many as 5.7 million noncitizens may have voted in the 2008 election won by Barack Obama, giving credence to Trump's much-maligned claim that more than 3 million illegal-alien voters cost him the nationwide popular vote last November.

In May 2017, Trump signed an executive order commissioning Vice President Mike Pence to lead an investigation of vote fraud, but the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity was disbanded in early January.

Facing lawsuits and resistance from election officials, the White House explained that "despite substantial evidence of voter fraud, many states have refused to provide the [commission] with basic information relevant to its inquiry."

“Rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense, today I signed an executive order to dissolve the Commission, and have asked the Department of Homeland Security to review these issues and determine next courses of action," the statement said.

While the commission was chaired by Vice President Pence, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach was the primary overseer.

Kobach was in federal court last week defending a Kansas voter-fraud law that requires all voters to show proof of citizenship. Kobach claimed the law has prevented between 1,000 and 18,000 noncitizens from casting ballots.

The law has been on hold since May 2016, when a federal judge ruled in the case brought by the ACLU that it likely violated the National Voter Registration Act.

Tipping New Hampshire

WND reported last September more than 6,000 people used out-of-state driver's licenses to vote in New Hampshire in the 2016, supporting Trump's claim he lost the state because thousands of Massachusetts residents came in to vote.

Trump claimed in February 2017 that out-of-state voters tipped the New Hampshire election, both against him and incumbent Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte. The Boston Globe at the time dismissed his allegation as "groundless."

But the vast majority of the 6,000 voters had neither obtained an in-state license nor registered a motor vehicle since the November vote, according to an inquiry by Republican Speaker of the New Hampshire House Shawn Jasper, the Washington Times reported.

A research group in New Jersey, Just Facts, announced it found that after examining post-election polling data, the number of noncitizens voting illegally in U.S. elections is likely far greater than previous estimates, the Washington Times reported.

As WND reported in March, many election experts agree with the president that widespread vote fraud exists, including illegal-alien voting. But they think it's unwise to make any estimates of the number of illegal voters, because there is no hard data at the moment. Yet, that likely will change with access now to records that were kept under wraps by the Obama administration.

Other evidence

J. Christian Adams, who worked in the Justice Department's Voting Rights Section under President George W. Bush and now heads the nonprofit Public Interest Law Foundation, obtained voter-registration records from eight of Virginia’s 133 cities and counties, discovering 1,046 illegal aliens were illegally registered to vote. He's also forced several counties to clean up their voter rolls in states such as Mississippi and Texas.

John Fund, author of several books on election fraud, told WND one year ago the Obama administration created an environment for vote fraud to thrive.

"When it comes to illegal votes," he said, "we need to end the Obama administration's consistent refusal to cooperate with states on allowing access to records of legal foreigners, illegal aliens and the Justice Department's refusal to require states to maintain clear voter lists if they accept federal funds for voting purposes.

Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of the Houston, Texas-based vote-monitoring nonprofit True the Vote, told WND "no one knows how many noncitizens are voting, because under the Obama administration, attempts to find answers were blocked at every turn."

Catherine Engelbrecht

She noted states that attempted to pass voter ID legislation or ask for proof of citizenship were sued by the DOJ.

True the Vote itself, she said, "was targeted for takedown by the administration because of the work we do: researching illegal votes, calling out election fraud, empowering citizens."

"We were asking questions they didn’t want answered," she said.

"Now, with the leadership of the Trump administration, we finally have an opportunity to stop guessing at how big the problem is," Engelbrecht told WND.

She said True the Vote is engaged in a "forensic audit" of the 2016 election to uncover illegal votes, election fraud and process deficiencies. The investigation "will be comparing data from state voter registries with data from scores of other available databases, including certain state agencies, national change of address, Social Security death index, and results from hundreds of FOIA requests."

In March 2017, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted announced that his office has identified an additional 385 noncitizens registered to vote in Ohio, 82 of whom have been identified as having voted in at least one election. It brings the total number of noncitizens on Ohio’s voter rolls Husted has been able to identify using available resources to 821, with 126 having actually cast ballots.