Marva Cook, 66, is charged with illegally voting in a federal election despite not being a U.S. citizen. Prosecutors say she voted in 14 elections between 1999 and 2022. Cook says she recently learned she was adopted as a toddler and born in Germany, contrary to what she had long believed.
The federal charge concerns Cook’s vote in the 2022 general election, according to syracuse.com. Prosecutors allege she knowingly voted despite not being a citizen, as reported by centralcurrent.org. Election records cited by Syracuse.com show votes in 14 primary and general elections from 1999 through 2022. The criminal complaint says Cook told investigators she had assumed she was a U.S. citizen.
Cook turned herself in before her Wednesday court appearance and was released on her own recognizance, with no bond, according to local reporting. Her attorney, Paul Tuck, argued she was neither a danger nor a flight risk and said she would appear in court. No further hearings or filing deadlines have been scheduled, Tuck has said.
A Life Built in Syracuse, A Discovery That Upended It
Cook says she was adopted as a toddler and only recently learned she was born in Germany. She changed her legal name from Mona Maria Kuehn to Marva Marie Cook in 2020 and applied for an updated green card, which prosecutors say she holds. Syracuse.com reported that she worked as a caretaker at Loretto for two decades and has spent the past eight years at the YMCA. Dale Avers, the YMCA’s community school program director, said Cook supports low-income families and youth and that he has known her for nearly 20 years.
How Adoption Can Affect Citizenship
Birth abroad and adoption by U.S. citizens do not, on their own, determine whether someone is a citizen. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services says current citizenship provisions for adopted children apply when specified birth-date and timing requirements are met: the child must have been born on or after Feb. 28, 1983, and meet the required conditions on or after Feb. 27, 2001. Its guidance also addresses legal custody and other conditions, and notes that different rules may apply in other circumstances. Those general rules do not establish Cook’s individual status, according to USCIS.
Cook is also an active member of All Saints Church and has long served as the parish’s Easter Bunny, pastor Fred Daley said. After court, Cook described prayer and community support as important to her as the case proceeds; community members accompanied her to court.
Cook has an immigration lawyer on standby should immigration proceedings arise, though none are currently pending. Under federal law, she may face deportation, a consequence tied to the broader uncertainty hanging over her case. The charge of voting by an alien carries a maximum penalty of one year in prison and a $100,000 fine, syracuse.com reports.
Part of a Wider Federal Crackdown
Cook’s case comes as federal agencies pursue investigations and prosecutions involving alleged noncitizen voting. First Assistant U.S. Attorney John A. Sarcone III, who is prosecuting the case from his upstate New York office, has said “voter fraud is rampant” in the state. The Department of Homeland Security has said it will not allow American citizens’ votes to be “canceled out” by noncitizens voting illegally. Neither DHS nor U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement responded to emails seeking comment, according to the Associated Press report carried in The Daily Gazette.
The push has produced similar cases elsewhere. Federal authorities have charged more than two dozen legal permanent residents in California with illegally voting or registering, and the Department of Justice separately accused 10 people who are not U.S. citizens of voter fraud offenses in Minnesota, with charges including nine counts of illegal voting and nine counts of making a false claim of citizenship to vote. In California, CalMatters reports that 28 immigrants face federal charges, with 22 accused of voting in at least one election, five accused only of registering, and one accused of submitting a provisional ballot in 2020.
Experts Say the Scale Doesn't Match the Rhetoric
The Department of Homeland Security has said it is currently investigating 1,600 cases of alleged voter fraud and has sent federal agents knocking on doors in several states to ask residents about their immigration status and voting history. DHS has also alleged that as many as 250,000 citizens could be illegally registered to vote, though election experts have disputed the accuracy of that figure, according to CBS News.
The Associated Press has reported that election law experts and former election officials describe noncitizen voting as rare, a tiny fraction of the more than 211 million active registered voters nationwide, and say it has not changed election outcomes. AP reporting also notes that some Homeland Security Investigations arrests involve related allegations, such as false claims to citizenship or false statements, rather than charges under the voting statute itself.
In Texas, officials referred 117 of 2,724 flagged registered voters to the state attorney general's office, resulting in seven people charged in mid-September. A federal judge this week restricted DHS from conducting election-related investigations in nine states, finding that error-prone government lists could sweep U.S. citizens into the dragnet, according to the Washington Post. The federal statute at the center of Cook's case, 18 U.S.C. § 611, makes it unlawful for an alien to vote in elections for president, vice president, senator, or representative, among other federal offices, subject to certain statutory exceptions, per the United States Code.
