Three foreign nationals face federal charges for illegally voting in the 2024 election and lying about their citizenship on Tennessee forms. U.S. Attorney Braden H. Boucek announced the charges on Friday for a man and two women from Jamaica, Honduras, and Trinidad and Tobago. The defendants are Garfield St. Vincent Bruce, Mariela Elizabeth Avila Ortiz, and Allison Melissa Wilkes.
Each person is accused of casting a ballot while falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen on their voter registration. Boucek said the right to vote is a sacred duty for those who hold citizenship. According to his statement, “Tennesseans need to know that those who vote illegally will be prosecuted to protect the integrity of our federal elections.”
Somali voters and their helpers are the subjects of federal investigations into alleged voter fraud in Maine. Security footage obtained by The Maine Wire shows interpreters appearing to touch ballots and point at them for voters. Jon Fetherston, a reporter who watched the voting in person, said he saw “a couple of people actually touching the ballots.”
Three “aides” help one man vote in Lewiston: https://t.co/9MlIYjGs4D
— The Maine Wire (@TheMaineWire) October 30, 2026
U.S. Attorney Andrew Benson confirmed his office is reviewing the video from Lewiston City Hall. He informed a reporter, “We will not tolerate threats to the integrity of our elections, and we look forward to working with the Attorney General’s Office and the Secretary of State’s office to defend our democracy.”
State law in Maine says translators cannot mark ballots or influence a voter’s choice. The footage reportedly shows aides handing ballots to voters, which breaks the strict rules on how helpers can assist.
These Tennessee charges come after reports that dozens of foreign nationals were accused of voting illegally in other states. States including Nevada, Pennsylvania, California, Florida, and New York face reviews of comparable cases, as The Daily Wire noted earlier this month. Most of those accused are lawful permanent residents, but one is an illegal immigrant.
The Justice Department is also fighting a legal battle in California over more than 20,000 ballots from likely noncitizens. A federal appeals court recently denied an emergency request to stop those ballots from being counted. The court ruling was 2-1, with Judge Patrick Bumatay dissenting against the decision.
Bumatay argued that mixing these suspect ballots with legal ones threatens the votes of eligible citizens. He noted that the federal government proposed a simple fix to separate the ballots until citizenship could be checked.
