Six individuals in three states were charged last week for various election-related crimes, including illegal voting and identity fraud.

Charges against three people were filed in California.

James Brass, 47, of California; Courtney Price, 49, of Florida; and Jateisha Herron, 33, of California, allegedly paid people to sign certain ballot petitions using stolen identities of registered voters, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a Sept. 14 statement.

The petitions aimed to collect voters’ signatures so that certain proposed measures could qualify for a place on the California ballot.

California’s ballot initiative process allows citizens to enact laws or constitutional amendments without legislative support.

For an initiative to become law, petitions for the measure must be circulated and have enough signatures from registered voters to qualify for ballots.

People can then vote to approve or deny the measure.

In its statement, the DOJ said that Brass managed a team that would allegedly collect signatures for petitions, with Price and Herron working under him.

Between February and August this year, Brass and Price allegedly paid money to people on Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles to sign certain petitions using the stolen identities of registered voters.

The hired individuals would copy the stolen personal information onto petitions, the DOJ said.

Brass and Herron then allegedly signed declarations attesting to the genuineness of the signatures and handed the bogus petitions to multiple petition coordinators, according to the DOJ.

Brass collected around $41,600 from these coordinators.

All three were charged with conspiracy to commit identity fraud in furtherance of a state felony.

In addition, Brass and Price faced an additional count of identity fraud in furtherance of a state felony.

The trio faces five years in prison for each count.

The fourth of the six individuals, Mariana Alexandra Dewey, 24, a Peruvian national and U.S. permanent resident, has been charged in Kansas with several criminal offenses for allegedly voting in a federal election despite being a noncitizen.

Dewey is accused of having registered to vote in November 2024 by falsely representing herself as an American citizen.

According to U.S. regulations, only citizens can vote in federal and state elections.

Noncitizens, including those who are permanent legal residents, are prohibited from voting in state and federal elections.

Some people convicted of felonies or serving time for certain crimes may also be ineligible to cast votes.

Bridget Johnson, 53, of Louisiana, and Michael Wedderburn, 52, a noncitizen from Jamaica, were charged in Louisiana.

Johnson is accused of submitting a voter registration application in Wedderburn’s name in 2024, claiming the Jamaican was a U.S. citizen.

Johnson was a candidate for mayor of Cotton Valley, Louisiana, in the 2024 election.

Wedderburn allegedly voted illegally in the mayoral race and the November 2024 federal election.

Johnson is facing a maximum penalty of five years in prison, and Wedderburn up to one year. Financial penalties may also be imposed.

“If you are gaming the election system, voting illegally, or committing voter fraud, you are breaking the law, and the Department will ensure such individuals cannot corrupt future elections,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said in the statement.

“The integrity of our elections is fundamental to our democracy, and those who seek to undermine it will be charged accordingly.”

The Epoch Times reached out to the legal representative of Wedderburn for comment but did not receive a response by publication time. The Epoch Times was unable to reach the legal representatives of other defendants.

US Noncitizen Voting

An Aug. 18 report released by the Census Bureau showed that thousands of noncitizens may have voted in the November 2020 general election.

Out of the nearly 160 million voters who cast ballots in the election, the bureau “determined with high confidence that over 128 million of these voter records represented citizens, and that more than 24,000 of these voter records represented noncitizens at the time of the election,” according to the report.

In addition, more than 32 million voter records were still to be analyzed.

People born in Mexico accounted for the largest share of noncitizen voters, with 3,800 individuals.

This was followed by those from Canada, Jamaica, the Philippines, and Germany.

California was most impacted by noncitizen voting, followed by Texas, Florida, New York, and Arizona.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a nonprofit governmental watchdog organization, questioned the numbers in an Aug. 27 statement.

“Ahead of this fall’s elections, there is urgent public interest in understanding the reliability of this ongoing effort, and it is imperative that these records are fully and expeditiously processed,” the group said.

CREW sent a request to the Department of Commerce on Aug. 21, seeking records related to the report.

Meanwhile, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in July that states that do not purge noncitizens and ineligible voters from their voter rolls could lose funding.

Mullin said that DHS had identified that more than 250,000 noncitizens were illegally present in voter registration rolls of California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Nevada.