Feds bring 18 more charges of illegal voting by immigrants in NC

Key Points:

• Federal prosecutors in North Carolina have charged 18 individuals, mostly immigrants, with illegally voting in past elections, adding to a dozen similar charges announced earlier this month; these cases span across the state's Eastern, Middle, and Western Districts.
• The Justice Department is deploying federal election monitors to Wake, Alamance, and Mecklenburg counties for the Nov. 3 midterm elections, with state officials clarifying that monitors can observe only outside voting enclosures and not interfere with the voting process.
• The investigations rely on data from a federal database (SAVE) cross-checked with state records, a process delayed by litigation but recently cleared by the Supreme Court, though concerns remain about potential false positives and wrongful accusations of noncitizen voting.
• Voting rights advocates argue that focusing on a small number of alleged noncitizen voters distracts from larger issues, such as thousands of legitimate ballots potentially being discarded due to stricter mail-in voting and voter ID rules, and warn that the timing of fraud indictments may intimidate voters.
• The Trump administration aims to increase federal election monitors nationwide in 2026 to over 1,000, more than doubling the number deployed in 2022, as part of a broader effort to safeguard election integrity amid heightened scrutiny of voting processes.