Federal prosecutors in New Jersey announced charges Friday against four residents for illegally voting in federal elections and for submitting false statements on their U.S. citizenship applications. The U.S. attorney’s office for New Jersey said in a statement that the four individuals were not U.S. citizens when they registered to vote and cast ballots, as federal law requires.
The charges include illegally voting in a federal election, making false statements when applying for citizenship, and unlawful procurement of citizenship or naturalization. Prosecutors said each defendant voted in at least one federal election from 2020 to 2024, a period that covered two presidential elections and one midterm cycle. After casting those ballots, the individuals submitted naturalization applications in which they falsely claimed to have never voted or registered to vote in a federal election.
U.S. Attorney Robert Frazer said the charges reflect his office’s “commitment to protecting the integrity of our election system.” Frazer, a veteran prosecutor, took office in March following a high-profile standoff between the judiciary and the Trump administration over control of the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey. Trump’s previous nominations for the position, including his former personal attorney Alina Habba, had been disqualified.
The New Jersey office launched a task force last year focused on election-related crimes, including voter registration fraud, fraudulent ballot casting, noncitizen voting, and multiple voting by the same individual in a single election. Social media claims of widespread voter fraud surged after the 2020 election and have continued to be amplified by President Donald Trump and his allies.
Current and former election officials, however, have said such fraud is isolated and rare. The country’s elections are decentralized, with thousands of independent voting jurisdictions, which make it virtually impossible to pull off a large-scale vote-rigging operation that could tip an election, officials have told The Associated Press.