The Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis and the state's Attorney General James Uthmeier announced this Thursday the arrest and prosecution of 20 individuals accused of electoral fraud as part of a state operation aimed at electoral integrity that spans multiple counties and targets, among other offenses, illegal voting in the 2024 general elections.
Of the 20 defendants, 16 are foreigners who allegedly registered as voters by falsely declaring themselves to be U.S. citizens and then cast their votes.
The other four are convicts who voted while on parole, which also disqualified them from participating in the polls.
"Florida will not allow anyone to steal the votes of Americans at the polls," Uthmeier stated. "These defendants swore to be qualified voters, voted in our elections, and then confirmed that they were never eligible to vote. Thanks to our state prosecutors, the FDLE, the Florida Department of State, and USCIS, they are being held accountable."
The accused come from multiple counties and have diverse nationalities: Mexican, Jamaican, Chilean, Bahamian, British, Indonesian, and Canadian, among others. Several signed citizenship acknowledgment forms admitting that they are not U.S. citizens, but they did so after having voted.
Among the documented cases is that of Selvin Uton Whilby, a 74-year-old Jamaican national residing in Tampa, who registered in 2008 claiming falsely to be a citizen and voted by mail in both the primaries and the general elections of 2024, with a voting history dating back to that same year of registration.
Cyntia Vanessa Canales, 62 years old, a Chilean national residing in Ocala, also appears, having registered twice —in 2012 and in 2022— claiming to have been born in Florida and voted in person in October 2024.
The investigations began based on references from the Florida Department of State and county election supervisors, following reviews of immigration status in federal databases. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) was crucial in confirming that the defendants were not citizens.
DeSantis emphasized that his administration has "zero tolerance for electoral fraud" and announced the creation of the Association of State and Local Election Officials, aiming for other states to replicate Florida's model.
With these 20 new cases, Florida exceeds 100 prosecutions for electoral fraud since the establishment of the Office of Electoral Crimes in 2022, with more than 50% of them initiated since Uthmeier took office.
The operation is part of a national offensive leading up to the midterm elections on November 3, 2026. Only in September, the federal Department of Justice brought charges against at least 16 individuals for illegal voting in several states, and four more immigrants were charged in Pennsylvania.
According to Reuters, the Trump administration has prosecuted around 20 people this month under the federal law that prohibits foreign voting, which accounts for 13% of all charges under that statute in three decades.
Florida also has recent precedents in this area: in June 2026, a Cuban with a deportation order admitted to voting illegally in a federal election, and in August a Colombian was sentenced to three years of federal prison for stealing the identity of a citizen and voting for over two decades.
Starting January 1, 2027, the Florida SAVE Act, signed by DeSantis in April 2026, will come into effect, requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register as a voter, a measure that is already facing legal challenges from civil rights groups.
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