Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.
What happened?
The Department of Justice announced Monday that four Pennsylvania residents had been charged with noncitizen voting, part of the Trump administration’s nationwide crackdown on election crimes ahead of the 2026 midterms.
In the same announcement, the department said 12 individuals in other states were also charged with noncitizen-voting-related crimes.
There is no evidence the cases are related or that voter fraud is happening on a widespread or coordinated scale.
Who was charged?
Hacina Saadi, 48; Paulo Silva, 54; Jamil Ahmad, 50; and Nighat Jamil, 47, were all charged with one count of voting by an alien during the 2024 election. Silva, Ahmad, and Jamil are all lawful permanent residents, while the Department of Justice said Saadi was residing in the country illegally.
The individuals or their attorneys did not immediately respond to emails seeking comments.
What is the context?
The charges announced Monday bring the total number of individuals charged with noncitizen-voting-related crimes in Pennsylvania to 11 since September.
Election officials contend that while voter fraud, including noncitizen voting, does occasionally happen, it is exceedingly rare.
Votebeat and Spotlight PA analyzed data on election crimes from the Pennsylvania court system, the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, Department of Justice press releases, and news reports dating back to mid-2015. The analysis found 165 allegedly fraudulent ballots have been cast in that time, including the four announced on Monday.
In that time period, more than 67 million votes were cast in Pennsylvania, meaning the rate of alleged fraudulent voting was roughly 0.00024%.
The Trump administration has also claimed that there are thousands of potential noncitizens on the state’s voter rolls. In July, the Department of Homeland Security claimed it had identified 250,000 potential noncitizens registered to vote in four states, including 14,576 in Pennsylvania.
Last month, Votebeat and Spotlight PA obtained an email from the DHS to Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt in which the department laid out its methodology for identifying those potential noncitizens registered to vote and offered to provide the full list to the state. However, as of today, it has not yet shared the list with Pennsylvania officials.
Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.
