Feds bring 18 more charges of illegal immigrant voting in North Carolina :: WRAL.com

Federal prosecutors are accusing 18 people of being immigrants who voted illegally in North Carolina in previous elections — charges that come less than a month after announcing similar charges for a dozen others.

Thursday’s announcement comes as the Justice Department prepares to send federal election observers to Wake, Alamance and Mecklenburg counties on Nov. 3, prompting state election officials to clarify where those observers will be allowed to observe voting.

“Every illegal vote silences the voice of a legitimate voter, striking at the heart of our great nation,” Ellis Boyle, U.S. Attorney for the state’s Eastern Federal District, wrote in a press release.

President Donald Trump and federal prosecutors in his administration are placing increased emphasis on election investigations during his second term. Democrats are favored to flip congressional seats in this year’s midterm elections, and Trump has in the past leveled allegations of voter fraud, claiming elections won by Democrats were stolen.

One of the people indicted earlier this month, Robert Corbett, 71, told WRAL immediately after his first court appearance that he voted for Trump and believed he was a U.S. citizen. Prosecutors say he is in fact Canadian.

The charges against Corbett and others all came from the state’s Eastern District, which stretches from Wake County to the coast. The new charges filed Thursday were spread across the state: nine in the Eastern District of North Carolina, five in the Middle District and four in the Western District. Prosecutors say the defendants illegally registered to vote or voted in previous elections, including the 2024 presidential election.

A prominent North Carolina voting rights attorney, Hilary Harris Klein of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, questioned why elections officials are focusing more on the 30 cases of alleged fraud than the thousands of ballots from legitimate voters that she says are likely to be rejected because of new, stricter rules on mail voting and voter ID.

“We have much bigger problems with our elections than non-citizen voting,” she said. “Not that they shouldn’t do their due diligence, and … the very small number shows success in resolving these issues. On the other hand, we have thousands of eligible voters’ ballots, rejected.”

Federal prosecutors have made charging decisions in election fraud cases based on information provided by state election officials. Sam Hayes, who heads the State Board of Elections, told WRAL in an interview Thursday that the investigation was delayed because of a dispute over the use of a federal database to cross-reference voter and citizenship records. Critics said it would lead to false positives and cause U.S. citizens to be accidentally and falsely accused of immigrant voter fraud, but the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the database to be used.

Hayes said state officials use the database to scout potential immigrant voters, but they also do additional work to ensure they don’t make mistakes. “We had to do our own analysis, and it took time,” he said. “Not everything is presented well when you receive it. There are several categories of information. And we were also waiting for litigation to take place around the use of the SAVE database for purposes of maintaining voter rolls. And after getting this order from the Supreme Court recently, we decided to move forward.”

Hayes added that the state has sent more names to the FBI than the 30 people charged so far. It is therefore possible that more accusations are still to come. He declined to say how many. However, earlier this year the state also sent letters to about 1,300 voters who had been flagged by that database as possibly being noncitizens.

Most people who register to vote in North Carolina do so at the DMV when they get their driver’s license. Hayes added that some of the potential non-citizens on the voter rolls did not attempt to break the law and were simply listed in error by DMV officials.

So far, criminal charges have focused almost entirely on people who actually voted, not just those who were registered to vote.

Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said Thursday the lawsuits were intended to protect the integrity of the election. “We must preserve the integrity of the ballot box by ensuring that only eligible people vote,” McCotter said in a statement.

The charges carry maximum penalties of one to five years in prison, depending on the offense. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Federal observers travel to North Carolina

The Justice Department’s latest announcement comes amid increased federal attention to elections in North Carolina and other states during the 2026 midterm elections.

The Trump administration’s goal is to send 1,000 election observers to all 50 states on Election Day. That would more than double the number of federal observers deployed during the 2022 midterms, when the DOJ under President Joe Biden sent 388 people to polling locations, Boyle said.

Klein, the voting rights lawyer, questioned whether the fraud charges, timed to coincide with this announcement by poll watchers, were intended to potentially intimidate voters.

“They could have raised these issues well before the election,” she said. “And wait for early voting to start? That really creates an environment of fear around the election – when we should be creating an environment that encourages voters.”

Hayes said his office began investigating the matter a few months ago, in April, but it was delayed because of lawsuits challenging the legality of using the SAVE database. He also said he expected the vast majority of voters would have no idea that federal poll watchers were there.

In an Oct. 20 email obtained by WRAL, USDOJ informed Alamance County election officials that federal observers would ensure compliance with voting rights laws, including protections for voters with disabilities and access to the ballot.

“As the Civil Rights Division has done in the past, our observers are simply observing,” the email said. “They do not interfere or interfere in any way with the voting process.”

The North Carolina State Board of Elections’ top attorney, Tim Hoegemeyer, told county election directors that federal observers are allowed near polling locations, but not inside where voting is taking place. “USDOJ observers are not permitted under state law to be inside the voting precinct during the day during voting,” he wrote in an email obtained by WRAL.

Pursuant to guidance provided to counties, federal observers may observe from outside polling place buffer zones, located 25 to 50 feet from the polling location, speak with voters, and attend public board of elections meetings. They can also observe the opening and closing procedures of polling stations, but cannot enter voting precincts while voters are casting their votes.

Wake County election officials confirmed they had been informed of the monitoring plans but said they did not know how many federal observers would arrive or which polling places they would visit.

“We welcome them to Wake County to see the great work of our election teams and hear directly from voters outside of the buffer zone,” said Riley Chater, public records coordinator for the Wake County Board of Elections, adding that they do not anticipate any notable impact on voters or precinct workers.