Concerns about the voting process and voter fraud continue as an immigrant in North Carolina was charged a fine for illegally voting three times.
The 70 year old woman, Hyo Suk George, is from Korea and has been in the United States for three decades. While she could have been sentenced to six months in jail, she instead was fined $100 by a Raleigh, North Carolina judge.
George is a green card holder, so she should not have been allowed to vote at all. When someone has a green card, they are granted residency as a non-citizen, but not full citizenship rights such as participating in elections. If you have a green card, you can stay in the country legally, but you can’t vote in United States federal, state or local elections.
The judge in the case spoke out against not George, but the elections board and officials who registered her to vote in the first place.
“So they see a green card and say, ‘That’s OK’ because they don’t know what they’re doing,” Judge Boyle said. “They ought to be a little smarter than that.”
According to George’s attorney, public defender Sherri Alspaugh, George was not familiar with the voting system and did not intend to vote illegally. She was encouraged to do so by others, including a town council member she knew from church. Before voting in this election, George had lived legally in the United States for two decades. George visited a local senior center to register to vote.
She had her driver’s license, Social Security Card and green card to the officials registering her, she was given a voter registration card and permitted to vote in elections. Based on this, she voted in 2008, 2010 and 2016.
While George was told she could vote legally, the local election board was incorrect. This is reflected in Judge Boyle’s low fine of $100 and comments about the election officials themselves. The local election board allowed George to register even though a green card holder is not legally permitted to vote. The mistake was not noticed for over ten years.
While this particular incident seems minor, it showcases the problems with the voting system and just how unaware and uninformed the people who register others to vote actually are. In this case, fraud was not intended, but in states across the nation, registering illegal immigrants, allowing individuals to vote without being citizens or allowing the dead to vote is increasingly commonplace.
People voting multiple times or in multiple districts obviously skews election results – but it happens. From California to North Carolina, voting scandals are becoming more and more commonplace, and are often not exposed until the election is complete and results are tallied.
Better education and training for those actually registering voters and then admitting them to the polls on election day would at the very least eliminate mistakes like the one above.
~ Liberty Planet
