Federal authorities arrested a 62-year-old Slovakian national in New Jersey on charges that he illegally voted in a federal election and lied about it on a citizenship application, the Daily Caller reported exclusively. The case marks the latest in a growing string of noncitizen voting prosecutions, and another data point that voters who keep hearing the problem doesn't exist might want to examine for themselves.
Marian Charitun, described as an illegal immigrant and a national of Slovakia, faces two federal counts: voting by an alien in a federal election, which carries a maximum sentence of one year in prison, and unlawful procurement of citizenship or naturalization, which carries up to ten years. The United States Attorney's Office Election Integrity Task Force brought the case.
The sequence of events, as laid out by an official who shared details with the Daily Caller, is straightforward. Charitun allegedly registered to vote in New Jersey while falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen. He then cast a ballot in the 2022 midterm elections.
At some point afterward, he applied for U.S. citizenship. On that application, he allegedly stated that he had never voted in a federal election. Federal reviewers discovered his voting history during the application process. His citizenship bid was denied, and charges followed.
In other words, the lie on the naturalization form led investigators back to the illegal vote, a chain of deception that collapsed under its own weight.
Charitun is not an isolated case. In May, four green card holders in New Jersey were separately charged with illegally voting in federal elections and falsely claiming on citizenship applications that they had never done so. The charges mirror Charitun's almost exactly: vote illegally, then lie about it when seeking the citizenship you never had.
And the Garden State keeps producing examples. Fox News reported that Eliezer Kadoch, a 39-year-old French national from Toms River, New Jersey, pleaded guilty to voting by an alien in the same 2022 federal midterm election. Kadoch faces up to six months in federal prison and a $100,000 fine, with sentencing scheduled for October 26. His attorney, Yosef Jacobovitch, said Kadoch "accepted responsibility for his actions" and that "there was never any intent to violate the law or cast an unlawful ballot," adding that the offense "does not require proof of criminal intent."
That last detail matters. You don't have to prove a noncitizen meant to break the law. The act itself is the crime.
The Kadoch case also exposed a systemic vulnerability: automatic voter registration tied to driver's licenses. If a state's motor-vehicle system registers people to vote without adequate citizenship verification, the door is open. The question isn't whether anyone walks through it. The question is how many do, and how many never get caught.
New Jersey is hardly alone in producing these prosecutions. A former Kansas mayor who was a Mexican national pleaded guilty to voting illegally in multiple elections, a case that drew national attention to the reality of noncitizen participation in American elections.
The Election Integrity Task Force, housed within the U.S. Attorney's Office, has been the vehicle for these prosecutions. The Charitun case, the four green card holders in May, and the Kadoch guilty plea all came through the same enforcement pipeline. The FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services have all played roles in building these cases.
For years, voters were told noncitizen voting was vanishingly rare, so rare it didn't justify tightening registration rules. The cases piling up in a single state suggest the problem may be larger than the reassurances implied.
That pattern extends well beyond the East Coast. A noncitizen in Minnesota faced felony charges after voting in the 2024 election, adding another state to the growing list of jurisdictions where illegal ballots have been documented and prosecuted.
While federal prosecutors rack up cases, Congress has struggled to pass legislation that would prevent the problem at the front end. The SAVE America Act, formally H.R. 7296 in the 119th Congress, would require proof of American citizenship to register to vote and photo identification to vote in federal elections. It has stalled with no clear path forward.
House Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox News on Sunday that Republicans plan to attach the measure to a reconciliation bill, bypassing the Senate's 60-vote filibuster threshold.
"This time we're going to try to put it on a reconciliation bill, and the reason that's so important, Maria, as you know, is it prevents the necessity of 60 votes in the Senate. The Democrats want no part of this, and remember, this is very basic stuff."
Johnson framed the provisions as common sense with overwhelming public support.
"We're just going to make sure you have to have proof of citizenship to register to vote and then show an ID when you turn out at the ballot box. These are 90-10 public opinion issues, and more than 70 percent of Democrats want to do it, but not the Democrats in the House and Senate, and so we've got to go around them."
The gap Johnson described, between what rank-and-file Democratic voters say they want and what their elected officials actually do, is the political core of this fight. If more than 70 percent of Democrats favor proof-of-citizenship requirements, as Johnson claimed, then the congressional Democrats blocking the bill aren't representing their own base. They're protecting a system that leaves the door cracked open.
The SAVE Act amendment has already fallen short in the Senate, where some Republicans joined Democrats to block the election integrity measure, a vote that frustrated conservatives who see the legislation as a bare minimum.
The Charitun case leaves several questions open. The specific date of his arrest has not been disclosed. The federal district court where charges were filed and the case docket number have not been made public. His precise immigration status at the time of arrest, whether he was on an expired visa, had entered without inspection, or held some other status, remains unclear.
It is also unknown when Charitun first registered to vote in New Jersey, or what registration process he used. Did a motor-vehicle transaction trigger automatic registration, as in the Kadoch case? Or did he affirmatively register through another channel? Those details could reveal whether the system failed him or he deliberately exploited it.
Meanwhile, efforts to strengthen election integrity at the legislative level continue to grind forward. The House committee recently moved election integrity bills to the floor after a lengthy probe, signaling that at least one chamber is willing to act.
Every illegal vote cast by a noncitizen cancels out the lawful vote of an American citizen. That isn't a talking point. It's arithmetic. The Charitun arrest, the four green card holders charged in May, the Kadoch guilty plea, these are not anomalies plucked from a spotless system. They are the cases that got caught.
Requiring proof of citizenship to register and an ID to vote is not voter suppression. It is the minimum a self-governing country owes its own citizens. The only people threatened by that standard are the ones who shouldn't be voting in the first place.
