The Justice Department announced charges involving 63 people for election-related crimes on Nov. 2, including illegal voting and fraudulent registration. Official totals: 195 aliens charged in nine weeks across 25 states.
Updated Nov. 9, 2026
On Monday, Nov. 2, 2026, the Justice Department announced charges involving 63 individuals for election-related crimes. The department said the cases involve illegal voting, fraudulent voter registration, and related offenses, and that the batch includes four illegal aliens.
Attorney General Todd Blanche called the announcement “the largest surge of voter-fraud arrests since President Trump returned to office,” according to the same Nov. 2 release. Blanche also said: “This Department of Justice will continue investigating and prosecuting voter fraud to restore confidence in our electoral system.”
The Nov. 2 release also stated: “In the last nine weeks alone, the Department has charged 195 aliens across 25 states with illegal voting and registration offenses. Since the beginning of this Administration, we have charged 239 people with voting fraud-related offenses.” Those cumulative figures come from the department’s own wording and are separate from the 63 people named in the Nov. 2 announcement alone.
“A complaint, indictment, and information merely contain accusations. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.”
U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, Nov. 2, 2026
What the Nov. 2 charges allege
According to the Justice Department, the Nov. 2 cases include voting by aliens in federal elections, false claims of U.S. citizenship to register to vote or to vote, and the fraudulent submission of a voter registration application in another state. The release lists defendants across multiple federal districts and describes the filings as complaints, indictments, or informations.
In the Eastern District of North Carolina, the department said nine aliens, including one illegal alien, were charged with election-related crimes. Several defendants are accused of falsely claiming citizenship to vote and of voting by an alien, with alleged votes spanning multiple general and primary elections, the release states.
In the Southern District of Texas, five aliens, including one illegal alien, were charged. The department alleged voting by an alien in the 2022 and 2024 elections in some of those cases, and in one instance an additional charge of falsely claiming U.S. citizenship.
In the Central District of California, six aliens were charged with making false statements on naturalization applications. The department alleged that some of those defendants had previously registered to vote or voted while not U.S. citizens, then denied those acts under penalty of perjury on naturalization forms.
A different fact pattern appears in the District of New Mexico, where the department charged Robert Glenn Johnson, 63, of Annapolis, Maryland, with fraudulently submitting a voter registration application in New Mexico. The release alleges he falsely claimed to be a New Mexico resident when he submitted the application to the Bernalillo County Clerk’s Office Bureau of Elections in Albuquerque.
Earlier batches in the same wave
The Nov. 2 announcement follows three earlier Justice Department charging releases in October. Each figure below is the count stated in that release’s own announcement, not a Politics Elections total of unique defendants across overlapping lists.
- Oct. 12, 2026: charges involving 16 individuals, including an illegal alien, for illegal voting, fraudulent registration, and related election crimes.
- Oct. 19, 2026: charges against 28 foreign nationals in California under “Operation Protect the Vote,” with federal law enforcement arresting 11 of them that day, according to the release.
- Oct. 26, 2026: charges involving 48 aliens in Pennsylvania, California, Florida, New York, and Nevada for illegal voting, fraudulent registration, and related election crimes.
- Nov. 2, 2026: charges involving 63 individuals, including four illegal aliens.
Each of those releases carries the same presumption-of-innocence disclaimer used on Nov. 2. Charged is not the same as convicted.
Citizen-only voting and list maintenance
Federal law limits voting in federal elections to U.S. citizens. States also run their own registration and list-maintenance systems under the National Voter Registration Act and state law. Politics Elections has previously covered how those systems work and how recent ballot measures treat citizenship and voter identification.
For the process side of list maintenance, see how states clean voter rolls. For recent ballot-measure fights over citizenship requirements, see coverage of citizen-only voting measures in six states. Related identification rules appear in voter ID ballot measures in six states.
Those explainers describe statutes and ballot language. They are not the same as a criminal charging announcement, and they do not resolve any defendant’s guilt or innocence in the cases described above.
What the numbers do and do not show
The Justice Department’s Nov. 2 figures are charging totals from the department’s own press release. The release distinguishes “63 individuals” in the Nov. 2 batch from “195 aliens” charged over nine weeks across 25 states and from “239 people” charged with voting fraud-related offenses since the start of the Administration. Politics Elections is not combining those categories into a single new total.
The department did not present the four October–November batch headlines as a count of unique, non-overlapping defendants. Some case descriptions that appear in the Oct. 19 California release also appear again in the Oct. 26 multi-state release. Readers should treat each announcement’s headline count as that day’s stated batch size and use the Nov. 2 cumulative lines for the department’s own nine-week and Administration-to-date totals.
Nothing in the Nov. 2 release is a verdict. The department’s own language remains the rule for this story: complaints, indictments, and informations are accusations, and every defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
Sources
Primary: Justice Department OPA, Nov. 2, 2026; Oct. 26, 2026; Oct. 19, 2026; Oct. 12, 2026. Related Politics Elections explainers: how states clean voter rolls; citizen-only voting measures; voter ID ballot measures. Checked Nov. 9, 2026.
