Five Charged Across Three States: What Noncitizen Voting Prosecutions Actually Require

By LegalVault Pro Team · 2026-09-06

In early September 2026, the Justice Department announced charges against five people in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Wisconsin for allegedly voting illegally or registering fraudulently in the 2022 or 2024 elections.

Among them, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced that a federal grand jury indicted Thomas Holtzman, 68, and his wife Marisol Guzman, 50, both of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. According to the announcement, Guzman is charged with voting as an alien, and Holtzman is charged with aiding and abetting a false statement of citizenship in order to vote, and with fraudulent registration. Separately, Mercedes Alexandra Cardoso of Union County, New Jersey, was charged with voting by an alien in a federal election, allegedly having cast a ballot in a June 2024 primary.

Caveat, and it matters more than usual here. These are allegations in charging documents. Every person named is presumed innocent unless and until the government proves guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. This subject attracts strong political claims in both directions; nothing below supports any general assertion about the prevalence of noncitizen voting, which these individual cases neither establish nor refute.

The Statutes Are Narrow and Specific

Public discussion of this topic tends to treat "illegal voting" as a single undifferentiated offense. Federal law is considerably more precise, and the distinctions determine what the government has to prove.

18 U.S.C. § 611 makes it unlawful for an alien to vote in a federal election. It is specific to federal elections and to the act of voting.

18 U.S.C. § 1015(f) criminalizes making a false statement of citizenship in order to register or vote. This reaches the registration stage rather than the ballot, and it is why a registration form is often the central document in these cases.

52 U.S.C. § 20511 covers fraudulent registration and voting in federal elections more broadly.

The aiding and abetting theory against Holtzman, under 18 U.S.C. § 2, reflects the allegation that a citizen assisted in the false citizenship statement. As discussed in these pages before, aiding and abetting exposes a facilitator to liability as a principal — the assisting party is not charged with a lesser offense.

Section 611 also contains express exceptions, including for certain individuals who reasonably believed themselves to be citizens based on parentage and who meet specified conditions. Those exceptions exist because the underlying mistake is genuinely common.

Why These Cases Are Hard to Prove

The element that carries almost every one of these prosecutions is not whether a noncitizen voted. It is knowledge.

The statutes require a knowing violation. A person who genuinely and reasonably believed they were eligible — and there are many routes to that belief — has not committed the offense. This is not a technicality. It is the central contested issue in most of these cases, and it is why the number of charged cases is far smaller than the number of irregular registrations that surface in administrative reviews.

Consider how the confusion arises legitimately. Motor vehicle agencies in many states offer voter registration during license transactions, sometimes with prompts that are easy to misread. Lawful permanent residents hold documents that look and function like full civic credentials in daily life. Some jurisdictions permit noncitizen voting in *local* elections — municipal or school board races — which creates a genuine and reasonable basis for confusion about federal ballots. Naturalization applicants in process may believe their status has changed before it formally has.

Each of those produces registrations that are wrong without being criminal. Separating them requires evidence of what the person actually knew and when.

The aiding and abetting charge is instructive on this point. Charging a citizen spouse with assisting suggests the government believes it can prove the false statement was not a misunderstanding — because someone who knew the true status participated in making it.

The Case Is Built From Forms

For anyone advising clients in this area, the practical reality is that these prosecutions are documentary almost end to end.

The evidence set is narrow and largely pre-existing: the voter registration application, with its citizenship attestation and signature; the source of the registration, whether motor vehicle agency, mail, third-party drive, or online portal; the poll book or ballot record establishing that a vote was cast; immigration records establishing status on the relevant date; and any naturalization file showing timing.

That last item is where these cases most often turn. The question is rarely "is this person a citizen." It is "was this person a citizen on the date of the registration or the ballot," and naturalization timing can be a matter of weeks.

The corollary is that defense work in this area is records work. Obtaining the complete A-file, the exact registration record with its metadata, and evidence of how the registration was solicited is what distinguishes a defensible case from an indefensible one.

The Immigration Consequence Is the Real Exposure

For a noncitizen client, the criminal penalty is frequently not the most serious consequence.

A false claim of United States citizenship carries severe immigration consequences under the Immigration and Nationality Act, including inadmissibility and deportability, and relief from it is extremely limited — historically far more limited than for many criminal grounds. Unlawful voting is separately a ground of deportability.

This means that a client facing a misdemeanor-level criminal exposure may simultaneously be facing permanent separation from the United States, including from citizen family members. Under *Padilla v. Kentucky* (2010), defense counsel has a constitutional obligation to advise on those consequences, and where they are clear, the advice must be clear.

Practically: no resolution in one of these cases should be entered without immigration counsel involved. A plea that looks favorable on the criminal side can be catastrophic on the immigration side, and the two analyses cannot be done by one lawyer working from instinct.

What to Do About It

Running a criminal defense and an immigration analysis off one factual record, with documents arriving from multiple agencies on different timelines, is precisely the file-management problem LegalVault Pro exists to solve. The client needs one chronology, not two.

Holding the Frame

Five prosecutions across three states, arising from the 2022 and 2024 elections, tell us that the Justice Department brought these particular cases. They do not tell us how common the conduct is, and they should not be recruited to argue either that it is widespread or that it never happens.

What they do illustrate, usefully and non-politically, is that the offense is narrow, that knowledge is the contested element, that the proof is documentary, and that for a noncitizen the immigration consequence dwarfs the criminal one.

Those are the four things a practitioner needs to know, and none of them depend on what anyone believes about election integrity generally.

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*This article discusses pending federal charges. All individuals named have been charged with, but not convicted of, the conduct described and are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing here is legal advice; immigration consequences are highly fact-specific and require individual counsel.*

*Sources: U.S. Department of Justice, charges in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Wisconsin; U.S. Attorney's Office, Middle District of Pennsylvania. Details as of September 6, 2026.*

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