Federal prosecutors in Las Vegas have charged a woman with illegally voting in the 2024 election while not a U.S. citizen, the latest case in a wave of noncitizen-voting prosecutions sweeping the country ahead of the 2026 midterms. Jullie Ann Sumalinog Moore is accused of casting a ballot in a federal election on or around November 2, 2024, and now faces up to a year behind bars.
The charge against Moore was announced by the Justice Department, which said in a statement that “an alien was charged today for illegally voting in a federal election in Nevada,” according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Nevada. As reported by KOLO, Moore has now been charged with one count of voting by an alien, a federal offense that carries a potential sentence of up to one year in prison, a fine of as much as $100,000, or both.
Sigal Chattah, First Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Nevada, used the announcement to issue a blunt warning to noncitizens who might consider casting a ballot. “Let me be absolutely clear: if you are a noncitizen and you cast a ballot in our elections, you are committing a federal crime,” Chattah said, per the same announcement. She added that “we will not hesitate to use the full weight of federal law enforcement to investigate, indict, and prosecute anyone who attempts to compromise the integrity of our elections,” and credited the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations for their work on the case.
Part of a Broader Federal Crackdown
Moore's case did not emerge in isolation. On July 7, months before Moore was charged, the Justice Department sent a letter warning Nevada election officials that they, too, could face criminal charges for allowing noncitizens to vote, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar pushed back hard on that warning, calling it a political stunt and saying “the letter is outlining federal and state laws that Nevada is already compliant with.” Aguilar reiterated that only U.S. citizens can vote in Nevada and said the state already has safeguards in place to ensure that is the case.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Nevada has separately said it would enforce federal voting laws to protect the 2026 elections, advising that people who are not eligible to vote — including noncitizens who may inadvertently receive election-related materials or ballots — should not complete or submit federal ballots, per guidance from the office.
Federal Statute at the Center of the Case
Moore is charged with voting by an alien, a federal offense. Similar charges have surfaced elsewhere this year: the Justice Department has charged more than two dozen alleged noncitizen voters in California, according to the Associated Press, while nine more Pennsylvania residents were charged with voting as noncitizens, bringing that state's total to 20 such charges since September, as reported by Pennsylvania Capital-Star.
In one comparable case highlighted by CBS News, a Peruvian national named Mariana Alexandra Dewey was charged with four voter-fraud-related crimes, including allegedly casting a ballot in the 2024 election. Nationally, the Justice Department has said 156 people have been charged with voting-fraud-related offenses since the start of the Trump administration, and Homeland Security Investigations has reassigned hundreds of agents to track down alleged noncitizen voters as part of what CBS News described as a “surge” initiative.
How Rare Is Voter Fraud, Really?
Election officials and analysts have repeatedly cautioned that voter fraud, including noncitizen voting, is exceedingly rare even as these prosecutions mount. A Votebeat and Spotlight PA analysis found just 176 allegedly fraudulent ballots cast out of more than 67 million votes since mid-2015, Pennsylvania Capital-Star reported. The Department of Homeland Security claimed in July that it had identified 250,000 potential noncitizens registered to vote across four states, including 14,576 in Pennsylvania alone — figures that have drawn scrutiny.
That scrutiny intensified this week when a federal judge restricted DHS from conducting election-related investigations in nine states, finding that error-prone government lists could sweep up U.S. citizens, according to the Washington Post. In Nevada specifically, officials initially said they had identified nearly 16,000 noncitizens on the state's voter rolls but were ultimately unable to provide evidence of a single illegally registered voter, per CBS News's reporting.
