Texas County Cracks Down on Illegal Voting

HOUSTON — Officials are investigating how at least 35 foreign citizens, and possibly dozens more, were allowed to vote in elections in Harris county.

One of those illegal voters was a 73-year-old Brazilian woman whose registration was canceled in 1996 after she acknowledged on a jury summons that she was not a U.S. citizen.

But the following year she was again given a new voter card, which wasn’t discovered until recently. Records show that since 1997 the woman voted at least four times in general and Democratic primary elections, most recently in November.

Last year, at least 35 foreign citizens either applied for or received voter cards by checking a box on the application saying they were U.S. citizens, said Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt, who also is the county’s voter registrar.

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“Making false claims of U.S. citizenship is all but impossible to detect,” said federation president Dan Stein.

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