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Robert Higdon, North Carolina District Attorney for North America, speaks with the media in 2018. [Andrew Craft/The Fayetteville Observer] (Andrew Craft / The Fayetteville Observer)
Eli Rosenberg
Journalist specializing in reporting and covering new national events
A 66-year-old woman from North Carolina was sentenced to two months in prison this week for encouraging her boyfriend to vote and the 39 helping to complete his registration form
Denslo Allen Paige, a grandmother who works part-time at Walmart and performs seasonal concerts as a poll clerk, was sentenced to two months of federal prison and fined $ 250 by Justice Louise Wood Flanagan. guilty of aiding and abetting voting by a non-citizen. If she had been tried for these charges and if she had lost, she was facing a five-year jail sentence and a $ 250,000 fine.
US Attorney Robert Higdon Jr. had forced him to focus on the lawsuit. non-citizen citizens for voting, rather than allegations of falsification of ballots in Bladen County, North Carolina. This is a strategy developed by President Trump and other Republicans, reported the Washington Post earlier this month: "Illegal voting is a widespread phenomenon that threatens integrity. The US Elections . "
Paige was arrested in August, the same day that the man with whom she had participated in the vote, Guadalupe Espinosa-Pena, holder of a green card from Mexico, with whom she n & # 39; 39; has no more love affair. At that time, she had told him that he should vote "if he wanted his voice to be heard," said a Higdon office press release.
On the voter card that she helped fill out, she left a question about citizenship unanswered. Paige told the investigators that she then submitted the form to the Elections Council for processing. But later in the process, another person erroneously verified the "Yes" citizenship issue, so that Espinosa was registered to vote, according to Higdon's office. .
[Trump-appointed prosecutor focused on allegations of voting fraud by immigrants amid warnings about separate ballot scheme]
During her sentence on Thursday, Paige told the court that she did not know that Espinosa-Pena could not vote legally.
"The reason is that there is nothing to know whether or not foreigners in law can vote – I have never worked at all elections," she said, according to a transcript of Published by the Huffington Post.
Paige's attorney, James E. Todd Jr., a federal public defender, told the court that the handbook given to election officials contained only one item. only one relevant mention of citizenship at the end of the document "Reasons for Electoral Contestation."
"I think it's a failure of the system, in this case insufficient training and preparation of these. "" 19659013] Mr. Higdon's spokesman, Don Connelly, guided the reporter's investigation to the office's press release.
Legal experts interviewed by the Washington Post described Paige's lawsuits as unusual. But this was part of a sweep led by the Higdon office in which 20 immigrants were arrested for several days for suspicion of illegal voting.
"I do not remember having anything to do with voting problems or voting fraud," Nick Akerman, a partner at Dorsey & Whitney and former federal attorney. "Someone must do everything possible to examine this."
Higdon, who was appointed to his seat in the North Carolina District of North Carolina in 2017 by Trump, continued these prosecutions while an organized effort to alter the polls organized by representatives of State According to a Washington Post investigation, several warnings were reportedly held in the same part of North Carolina. This effort tainted an unresolved congressional race from November
[‘The most bizarre thing I’ve ever been a part of’: Trump panel found no widespread voter fraud, ex-member says]
"The right to vote is a precious privilege reserved for the citizens of the United States," said Higdon in his statement. "My office will do its part to protect the rights of every American citizen to vote freely and to have it counted fairly."
Investigators from Homeland Security Investigations and US Citizenship and Immigration Services were involved.
Akerman stated that US prosecutors' offices were generally focused on serious crimes, large-scale crimes or that prosecutions would have a deterrent effect. "It's a rare event," he said about the details of the crime for which Paige pleaded guilty. "It surprises me that resources are being used."
Higdon's efforts, in progress, are part of a national debate on voting, increasingly marked by bitter partisan conflicts. Republicans in the states of the country have been working to put up restrictive requirements for voting in order to eliminate what they say is a significant fraud problem; According to experts and researchers, the actual amount of electoral fraud has never been statistically significant.
[Here are nine investigations on voter fraud that found virtually nothing]
President Trump's claim that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election has never been supported by any evidence. The commission it created to investigate election fraud has not presented any widespread evidence of fraud before its dissolution, less than a year after its inception.
A report format that the commission was working on included blank sections in sections such as "Incorrect Registration of Electors". practices "and" instances of fraudulent or abusive voting, "sign that one of the members of the commission later stated that it was instead seeking to prove pre-established conclusions.
In Texas, the Last month, Republican officials announced that 58,000 non-citizens may have voted illegally in elections in the previous two decades, but it was soon revealed that thousands of people on the list had the In North Carolina, Florida, Colorado, Indiana, and Kansas, officials made similar claims that did not materialize, reported The Post.
"Many people used electoral fraud as an excuse to pass really restrictive laws, to make voting more difficult, but would not make our elections safer, and academics, researchers and advocates reacted quickly and convincingly noting how rare election fraud is, "said Myrna Pérez, director of the Brennan Center. Draft Voting Rights and Elections. "And in response to that, we see some people decide to be extremely aggressive and pursue their actions to have arguments for discussion."
Many Democrats Say Restrictive Voting Laws Eliminate Participation and Choke the desire of voters to participate.
"I would not be surprised if these indictments later serve to justify a plethora of restrictions to the right – many of which have nothing to do with the underlying problem," he said. Pérez.
In a brief interview with the Washington Post, Paige explained that dealing with the power of the federal government had been difficult for her.
"This kind of thing will keep you awake – you will never think that you would have serious problems," she said. "Go to a federal prison and fined $ 250,000 and that sort of thing. It is very traumatic.
Amy Gardner contributed to this report.
Read more:
Republicans were unhappy with election fraud – before their candidate was threatened
Kris Kobach used imperfect research to defend the group of experts on election fraud Trump, according to experts
How an angry star chef, MAGA-hat tweet triggers a storm of misleading information
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