A 19-year-old woman has been charged with illegally voting as a noncitizen in the 2024 election.
Bernadette Acaso, a legal immigrant from the Philippines, told investigators she felt pressured by her uncle, who told her she had to vote and for a particular candidate.
Authorities didn’t say who that candidate was, according to court documents detailing the case.
She cast her ballot by mail.
Ms. Acaso suggested she was susceptible to pressure because the uncle was the one who filed the petition for her family to immigrate to the U.S. She came in 2018 and holds a green card, signifying lawful permanent status.
But an FBI special agent, in an affidavit to the court, said Ms. Acaso wasn’t physically threatened and mailed the ballot “of her own free will.”
Ms. Acaso also stated that when she voted, “she believed [legal permanent residents] could vote and, therefore, did not realize what she was doing was illegal,” the agent, Benjamin Sexton, said.
He said the Maui County clerk referred the case to the FBI. The case was unsealed Friday.
It’s illegal for noncitizens to vote in elections for national office.
Ms. Acaso’s case comes amid increasing attention to the issue of noncitizen voting.
President Trump earlier this month called noncitizen voting a vulnerability in America’s election system.
His Homeland Security Department said it ran names from voter lists of four states — California, Nevada, Pennsylvania and New Jersey — through its databases and found a quarter of a million potential noncitizens on their rolls.
Days after the president’s claims, New Jersey Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill admitted that her state registered 6,600 noncitizens through what she described as a software glitch from the motor vehicle bureau. Green card holders who checked the box saying they weren’t citizens were somehow still added to the rolls between June 2023 and June 2024, she said.
She suggested nearly 400 of them even cast ballots.
In Hawaii, Ms. Acaso’s case is the second this summer involving a Filipino.
In June, federal prosecutors charged Remedius Alasaas with illegal voting after she cast ballots in 2022 and 2024.
