Records Reveal 583 Foreign Nationals Registered
to Vote in Washington, DC
According to federal
law, only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections, but a growing
number of state and local elections allow
non-citizens to vote. Among them are San Francisco and Oakland, California,
along with some cities in Maryland and Vermont. In February, a state
appeals court ruled a similar New York City law violates the state
constitution.
In May 2024, we received records
from the District of Columbia, explaining to illegal aliens and other
noncitizens how they can register to vote in local elections.
Now we have a better picture of voters in your nation’s capital.
We received records showing that as of June 583 foreign nationals are
registered to vote in Washington, DC. The records from the Board
of Elections also confirm that noncitizens can be election
workers.
We received the documents in response to a May 14, 2024, Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) request for records regarding the number of
noncitizens registered to vote in Washington, DC, under the Local Resident
Voting Rights Amendment Act.
In 2022 the DC Council amended
the District of Columbia Election Code of 1955 “to expand the definition
of the term qualified elector for the purpose of local elections to include
otherwise eligible non-citizen residents.” The act went into effect in
2023 and allows noncitizens to vote in local elections for positions
including mayor, attorney general, city council member, State Board of
Education member or Advisory Neighborhood Commission member. Non-citizens
can also vote on local referendums, ballot initiatives and recalls.
An analysis of DC voter registration records made available to us shows
that on June 13, 2024, the makeup of registered voters in DC was:
- Total
Voters: 457,302
- US
Citizens: 456,719
- Foreign Nationals: 583
- Democrats: 353,048
- Republican: 23,482
- No
Party Affiliation: 73,760
- Other: 7,012
DC records also show that noncitizens can work
at the polls if they are:
- A DC resident
- At
least 16 years of age
- Attend or has graduated from a public
or private secondary school or institution of higher education
- Are able to speak English
The records describe a virtual town hall meeting on April 30, 2024, that explains
voting to noncitizens (previously disclosed by Judicial Watch). Among
the topics:
- What
offices can non-citizens vote for? Which ones can they not vote for?
- Voter
Registration and Voter Rights/Responsibilities
- How
does voter registration work? Steps and options on how to register to
vote.
- What
kind of language access resources does DCBOE provide for voter
registration?
- Ballots: show a sample
- Language Access
- General language access overview
- Election Day resources for Language
Access: what does the DCBOE [Board of Elections] provide?
- Election must knows
- Important dates and deadlines
including ballots mailed, voter registration, party affiliation, Early
Voting hours, and Primary Election Day
The records we obtained include a Board of Elections meeting
transcript that explains that noncitizens are not required to have an
ID to vote. If they do not have proof of residence when they go to register
to vote or vote for the first time they can still vote by “Special
Ballot.” Also, prisoners are also welcome to vote, according to a “Voting
Guide for Incarcerated Residents:”
As a District of Columbia resident, you have the right to vote, even if
you are incarcerated.
Even if you are in a correctional facility outside of the District of
Columbia, if you are registered, you do not lose your residency status and
you have the right to vote.
Once you are properly registered, you will be mailed a ballot prior to any
District of Columbia election for which you are eligible.
If your ballot was mailed to your place of incarceration and you were
released prior to receiving it, you can still vote at any Vote Center
during Early Voting or on Election Day.
The fact that over 500 foreign nationals can vote in local elections in
Washington, DC, is a national scandal and an insult to every American
citizen. Congress can and must stop this attack on the voting rights of
citizens.
Hearing Held in Suit Over Mississippi Post-Election Day Absentee Ballot
Counting
Federal law requires an Election Day, not an “Election Week.” This week
we continued our challenge of a Mississippi election law permitting
absentee ballots to be received as late as five business days after
Election Day. That’s illegal, violates the civil rights of voters, and
encourages fraud.
A federal
court hearing was held before Judge Louis Guirola, Jr., in the
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, Southern
Division.
In February of this year, we filed a civil rights lawsuit
on behalf of the Libertarian Party of Mississippi (Libertarian
Party of Mississippi v Wetzel et al.
(No. 1:24-cv-00037)). The court consolidated the case we filed with one
filed by the Republican National Committee, the Mississippi Republican
Party, and other complainants.
Our lawsuit details:
Under federal law, the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November
of every even-numbered year is election day (“Election Day”) for
federal elections.
Congress recently reaffirmed a single national Election Day when it enacted
the Electoral Count Reform Act (“ECRA”).
Under the recent Congressional amendments, no extension of Election Day
shall be allowed unless there are “force majeure events that are
extraordinary and catastrophic” that justify extension.
Despite Congress’ unambiguous and longstanding statement regarding a
single and uniform national Election Day, Mississippi extended Election Day
by allowing five additional business days after Election Day for receipt of
absentee ballots.
No “force majeure events that are extraordinary and
catastrophic” currently exist in Mississippi to justify extending the
ballot receipt deadline for the November 5, 2024 federal election for
Presidential and Vice-Presential Electors.
We argue that holding voting open for five days past Election Day violates
the constitutional rights of voters and candidates:
Counting untimely, illegal, and invalid votes, such as those received in
violation of federal law, substantially increases the pool of total votes
cast and dilutes the weight of votes cast by Plaintiff’s members and
others in support of Plaintiff’s federal nominees.
Our complaint points out that, based on the reported
numbers, as many as 1.7% of votes cast in Mississippi in 2020
were received after Election Day.
In 2022, on behalf of Congressman Mike Bost and two other registered
voters, we sued
Illinois to prevent vote-by-mail ballots (even those without postmarks) to
be counted if received up to 14 calendar days after Election Day, if the
ballots are dated on or before Election Day. The case is now on appeal.
We are a national leader in voting integrity and voting rights. As part of
our work, we assembled a team of highly experienced voting rights attorneys
who stopped discriminatory elections in Hawaii, and cleaned up voter rolls
in California, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, among other
achievements.
Robert Popper, a Judicial Watch senior attorney, leads its election law
program. Popper was previously in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights
Division of the Justice Department, where he managed voting rights
investigations, litigations, consent decrees, and settlements in dozens of
states.
In December 2023, notice
letters were sent to election officials in the District of
Columbia, California, and Illinois, notifying them of evident violations of
the National
Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993, based on
their failure to remove inactive voters from their registration rolls. The
letters point out that these jurisdictions publicly reported removing few
or no ineligible voter registrations under a key provision of the NVRA. The
letters threatened federal lawsuits unless the violations were corrected in
a timely fashion. In response to Judicial Watch’s inquiries, Washington,
DC, officials admitted that they had not complied with the NVRA, promptly
removed 65,544 outdated names from the voting rolls, promised to remove
37,962 more, and designated another 73,522 registrations as “inactive.”
NVRA lawsuits subsequently were commenced against California
and Illinois.
In July 2023 we filed
an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief,
supporting the decision
of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine, which struck down
Maine’s policy restricting the use and distribution of the state’s
voter registration list (Public
Interest Legal Foundation v. Shenna Bellows (No. 23-1361).
According to a national
study conducted by Judicial Watch in 2020, Maine’s statewide
registration rate was 101% of eligible voters.
In July 2023 we settled
a federal election integrity lawsuit on behalf of the Illinois Conservative
Union against the state of Illinois, the Illinois State Board of Elections,
and its director, which now grants access to the current centralized
statewide list of registered voters for the state for the past 15
elections.
In April 2023, Pennsylvania settled
with us and admitted in court filings that it removed 178,258 ineligible
registrations in response to communications from us. The settlement commits
Pennsylvania and five of its counties to extensive public reporting of
statistics regarding their ongoing voter roll clean-up efforts for the next
five years.
In March 2023, Colorado agreed
to settle our NVRA lawsuit alleging that Colorado failed to remove
ineligible voters from its rolls. The settlement agreement requires
Colorado to provide us with the most recent voter roll data for each
Colorado county each year for six years.
In February 2023, Los Angeles County confirmed
the removal of 1,207,613 ineligible voters from its rolls since last year,
under the terms of a settlement
agreement in a federal lawsuit
we filed in 2017.
We settled
a federal election integrity lawsuit against New York City after the city
removed 441,083 ineligible names from the voter rolls and promised to take
reasonable steps going forward to clean its voter registration lists.
Kentucky
also removed hundreds of thousands of old registrations after it entered
into a consent decree to end another Judicial Watch lawsuit.
In February 2022, we settled
a voter roll clean-up lawsuit against North Carolina and two of its
counties after North Carolina removed over 430,000 inactive registrations
from its voter rolls.
In March 2022, a Maryland court ruled
in favor of our challenge to the Democratic state
legislature’s “extreme” congressional-districts gerrymander.
Judicial Watch Sues for January 6 DC Police Bodycam Videos
Our investigation of January 6 continues.
We filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit
against the District of Columbia for all bodycam footage captured by
Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) Officer Michael Fanone and all
audio/video captured by MPD officers who responded to the protest at the
U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 (Judicial
Watch v. District of Columbia (No.
2024-CAB-003453)).
We filed suit after the Metropolitan Police Department denied our August
2021 request for:
All audio/video recordings captured on body-worn cameras from MPD
officers during their response to protest activities in and around the
Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021.
All body worn camera video captured by Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police
Officer Michael Fanone when responding to protests at the Capitol Building
on Jan. 6, 2021.
The DC Metro Police rejected our request because the videos are “part of
an ongoing investigation and criminal proceeding” and their release would
result in an “invasion of privacy.”
We appealed the denial, stating, “[T]he records in question are of great
public interest, which outweighs any asserted privacy interests.
Furthermore, the assertion of an ongoing criminal investigation does not
preclude the release of the requested video, as police body-worn camera
video is routinely released pending the conclusion of law enforcement
proceedings.”
The Metropolitan Police acknowledged receipt of the appeal but did not
respond further.
In May 2021, CNN claimed to have received “exclusive
footage” of DC Metropolitan Police Officer Fanone being
“assaulted while defending the U.S. Capitol” during the protest on
January 6, 2021, which it subsequently aired.
In July 2021, Fanone gave testimony
to a House Select Committee in which he stated, “My body camera captured
the violence of the crowd directed toward me during those very frightening
moments. It’s an important part of the record for this Committee’s
investigation and for the country’s understanding of how I was assaulted
and nearly killed as the mob attacked the Capitol that day, and I hope that
everyone will be able to watch it.”
Fanone, then 41, retired
from the police at the end of 2021 and went on to write a book
and become a contributor
for CNN.
The American people deserve the full picture from the incident at the
Capitol on January 6, 2021. What are they hiding? The DC Metropolitan
Police Department should be transparent and release these secret January 6
videos.
We are extensively investigating the events of January 6.
In February 2021, we filed a lawsuit
under the common law right of access to public records against the U.S.
Capitol Police for emails and videos concerning the January 6, 2021,
protest at the Capitol.
In April 2024, we received
records from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in a Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, showing that the FBI opened a criminal
investigation of Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt after her killing and
listed four “potential violations of federal law,” including felony
rioting and civil disorder.
In January 2024, we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit
on behalf of Aaron Babbitt and the Ashli Babbitt Estate against the U.S.
Department of Justice for all FBI files on Ashli Babbitt.
In September 2023, we received records
from the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, a component of the
Department of Justice, in a FOIA lawsuit that detailed the extensive
apparatus the Biden Justice Department set up to investigate and prosecute
January 6 protestors.
A previous
review of records from that lawsuit highlighted the prosecution
declination memorandum documenting the decision not to prosecute
U.S. Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd for the shooting death of Babbitt.
In January 2023, documents
from the Department of the Air Force, Joint Base Andrews, MD, showed U.S.
Capitol Police Lieutenant Michael Byrd was housed at taxpayer expense at
Joint Base Andrews after he shot and killed U.S. Air Force veteran Ashli
Babbitt inside the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
In November 2021, we released
multiple audio,
visual
and photo
records from the DC Metropolitan Police Department about the
shooting death of Babbitt on January 6, 2021, in the U.S. Capitol Building.
The records included a cell
phone video of the shooting and an audio of a brief police
interview of the shooter, Byrd.
In October 2021, United States Park Police records
related to the January 6, 2021, demonstrations at the U.S. Capitol showed
that on the day before the January 6 rally featuring President Trump, U.S.
Park Police expected a “large portion” of the attendees to march to the
U.S. Capitol and that the FBI was monitoring the January 6 demonstrations,
including travel to the events by “subjects of interest.”
Judicial Watch Sues Treasury Dept. for Foreign Purchases of U.S.
Farmland Records
Chinese and other foreign purchases of U.S. farmland could pose a
significant threat to U.S. national security. That the Biden administration
is hiding records about this concerning issue is not reassuring.
We’re acting. We filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit
against the U.S. Department of Treasury for records of communication
between the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)
and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) regarding the purchase of
U.S. farmland by foreign entities (Judicial
Watch v. U.S. Department of the Treasury (No.
1:24-cv-01811)).
We sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the
Treasury Department failed to respond to an April 10, 2024, FOIA request
for:
Any and all records of communications between the Committee on Foreign
Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and the U.S. Department of
Agriculture concerning, regarding, or relating to the purchase of U.S.
agricultural real estate by foreign entities.
On January 19, 2024, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a
report
which found significant gaps in information collection and timely
information sharing between the Committee on Foreign Investment and other
government agencies, including the USDA, concerning foreign investment in
U.S. agricultural land.
The GAO report concludes:
Recent national security risks related to foreign investments in U.S.
agricultural land have highlighted the importance of CFIUS’s reviews.
CFIUS is the main authority to address the national security ramifications
of foreign investment in the United States, according to Treasury and DOD
officials. However, we found that CFIUS does not currently have regular and
timely access to detailed AFIDA [Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure
Act] information, the nation’s most comprehensive data on foreign
investments in U.S. agricultural land, according to USDA officials.
For example, according to a Fox News report,
in February 2023, the city council in Grand Forks, North Dakota, voted
unanimously to strike down Chinese-owned food manufacturer Fufeng Group’s
proposed corn mill on 300 acres of farmland it purchased which is 12 miles
from the U.S. Air Force’s Grand Forks base.
In a January 2023 letter
to North Dakota’s U.S. senators, Air Force Assistant Secretary Andrew
Hunter pointed to the proposed corn mill's proximity to Grand Forks Air
Force Base as a major risk:
Thank you for meeting with Department of
the Air Force representatives last month regarding the Fufeng Group's
proposal to build a large com milling processing plant approximately 12
miles from Grand Forks Air Force Base. Based on the briefings provided, you
asked for the Department's view of the national security implications of
the Fufeng Group Limited's proposed activity.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the
United States (CFIUS) considered an October 2022 filing by the Fufeng Group
to acquire certain assets in the vicinity of Grand Forks, North Dakota.
Grand Forks Air Force Base is the center of military activities related to
both air and space operations.
While CFIUS concluded that it did not have
jurisdiction, the Department's view is unambiguous: the proposed project
presents a significant threat to national security with both near- and
long-term risks of significant impacts to our operations in the
area.
Packs of ‘Fighting Age Males’ in Military Uniforms Entering
U.S.
Arizona is beleaguered by illegal aliens pouring across the border, and we
should all be worried about the unvetted people who are being distributed
throughout our country. Our Corruption Chronicles blog has some new
troubling
details.
As the nation’s largest southern border crossings finally receive
mainstream media coverage years into an unprecedented illegal immigration
crisis, untold numbers of “fighting age males” dressed in military
uniforms are entering the United States through remote areas with no Border
Patrol presence. It is a palpable security lapse unlikely to be reported by
most news outlets and local, federal, and state law enforcement sources
have provided Judicial Watch with detailed accounts, reports, diagrams, and
photos of the situation which is terrorizing residents in a once harmonious
Arizona town just a few miles from Mexico. They blame the Biden
administration’s catastrophic open border policies for the serious
problems that have gripped the area in the last few years.
The Santa Cruz and Pima County regions in
southwestern Arizona have been slammed with extraordinary violence and
crime fueled by Mexican cartels—smuggling drugs and humans—that are
victimizing fourth and fifth-generation cattle farmers who have captured
thousands of illegal immigrants on security cameras passing through their
property since Joe Biden became president. Sometimes they find dead bodies
and drug paraphernalia. “Violent activity has drastically increased over
the past three years since the border is now perceived to be wide open,”
a veteran law enforcement official told Judicial Watch this week, adding
that in the communities of Amado and Arivaca American citizens feel much
less safe than they did when Donald Trump was president. Both are cattle
ranching towns with small populations that are diminishing because of the
increased violence. Amado is nestled in the Santa Cruz River Valley about
29 miles from the Mexican border. Arivaca is situated southwest of Amado
about 11 miles from Nogales, Mexico.
An unmanned Border Patrol checkpoint east of
Arivaca worries residents deeply, but the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) has no intention of deploying agents, according to multiple sources.
In the meantime, law enforcement officials and residents confirm that young
men are pouring in through the region in what appears to be an organized
movement operated by Mexican cartels. “They are unemployed, the majority
are fighting age males and there is a strong possibility some have
undergone some level of insurgency training,” according to a law
enforcement source familiar with the situation. The groups of men are
usually dressed in “camouflage military uniforms, indicating a robust and
well-funded supply network to ensure everyone is outfitted the same,”
said an intelligence officer with extensive U.S. military training who
provided Judicial Watch with pictures and graphs of recent crossings. The
uniformed men also carry camouflaged backpacks and wear carpet booties to
hide footprint tracks. Large piles of the disposed carpet booties litter
ranches on the U.S. side, creating a hazard for cattle that consume the
trash.
One longtime area rancher said that since
Biden became president, he has recorded over 3,560 illegal immigrants on
security cameras on his property, a tenfold increase from the previous
administration. Another said he has not seen a Border Patrol agent for
quite a while, likely because the frontline Homeland Security agency is
overwhelmed with the onslaught of migrants in the last few years. “They
have recommended we not travel to certain areas of our ranch, and we never
go out there at night,” said the rancher, who does not want his name used
out of fear for the safety of his family. Locals say the violence is
causing the already small population of Arivaca to dwindle quickly. A few
years ago, the town had 1,200 residents and now there are approximately
600. Authorities say those who leave are mostly relocating north to Green
Valley, about 35 miles away, or Tucson which is around 60 miles away. The
area has become so dangerous that the U.S. Forest Service told a rancher it
would no longer travel there to monitor enclosure areas established to
oversee endangered species.
The continuous stream of trash and human
waste left behind by the staggering flow of migrants and smugglers has also
devastated the local environment and livestock. Besides large piles of
discarded carpet booties, mounds of plastic waste are having a detrimental
effect on cattle because they eat it and become ill, ranchers said. Many
also die after ingesting traces of drugs found in wrappings left behind by
smugglers. To help illustrate how porous the border is in this region, one
rancher said Mexican cattle regularly cruise into the U.S. side, creating a
major risk of introducing illnesses to American cattle that, although
inoculated, may be vulnerable to new strains and diseases that may prevail
south of the border. “We removed 120 Mexican cattle over the past six
months,” said a veteran rancher, who explained that it is a lot of extra
work to keep the foreign livestock from mingling with local cattle to
prevent unsafe beef being distributed throughout the U.S. food
industry.
If Biden gets reelected the situation will
likely worsen, say law enforcement officials and residents in the remote
Arizona region. Other small towns are also suffering from the impact of
this administration’s flagrant open border policies. Just a few months
ago Judicial Watch wrote about another
once tranquil border region that has been devastated by illegal immigration
and drug smuggling. It is situated in Cochise County to the east of Amado
and Arivaca in the picturesque Sonoran Desert surrounded by the scenic
Huachuca Mountains. Human and drug traffickers regularly evade a meager
force of Border Patrol agents in the mountainous region and local law
enforcement officials say the addition of the new “American smuggler,”
U.S. citizens, predominantly young adults from Phoenix and Tucson recruited
by Mexican cartels through social media, has created deadly consequences in
the communities where the American recruits often travel at dangerously
high speeds through local roads and highways.
Until next week,
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