Noncitizen Admits To Voting Multiple Times In Georgia Elections

A woman who moved to Georgia from the Bahamas thirty years ago and is not a citizen admitted during a Dec. 9 State Election Board (SEB) hearing that she has voted multiple times. It is illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections.

Clayton County resident Melanie Pickett is a Bahamian native but has lived in the Peach State for approximately 30 years.

According to Pickett, she does not “know” “how it happened.”

“I got a driver’s license … and then I started getting” voting-related information “in the mail, and I said, ‘Oh, OK.’ And then I got a jury duty [summons]. So I went to jury duty, and at the end of the information [sheet] you had to fill out, it said, ‘Are you a U.S. citizen,’ and I said, ‘no’ and they told me I could go home,” Pickett said.

“This year, I think, this was my second time trying to vote, and this year they told me I couldn’t vote, and that was about it,” Pickett said during the Dec. 9 SEB hearing. Pickett said, however, that she was informed she was ineligible to vote, apparently due to her noncitizen status.

But Pickett subsequently said she “maybe” voted three times. Pickett said she assumed she could vote since her husband and children all voted. When SEB member Janelle King asked Pickett if she “typically vote[s],” she responded, “I take my husband, and if he vote, I vote.”

Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger conducted an audit in 2024 that compared court records from counties against state election, driver’s license data, and information from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Twenty noncitizens who were registered to vote had simultaneously declared they were not citizens when summoned for jury duty. Pickett noted during her hearing that she accurately noted on a jury summons form that she was indeed not a citizen.

Though Pickett indicated she voted a handful of times, SEB member Dr. Janice Johnston cited an investigation that found voting records showing Pickett voted 23 times between November 2000 and December 2022.

Johnston also asked Pickett, “When you sign the oath, when you register, when you enter the polling place to vote, and it states that you meet the requirements to vote and you’re a U.S. citizen, do you sign that?” Pickett said, “I gave them my driver’s license” and “they gave [her] a paper to sign, but she doesn’t think she read the forms: “I just go straight through it.”

The SEB ultimately voted to send this case to the district attorney, state attorney general, and Department of Justice.

While noncitizen voting is illegal, current federal law is largely hamstrung — as evidenced by Pickett’s case. Prospective voters simply check a tiny square box on a federal voter registration form attesting under penalty of perjury that they are a citizen. But that’s it — it’s the honor system.

To remedy the insecure system, Republicans in the House have passed the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would amend the 1993 National Voter Registration Act to require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. The legislation, however, has stalled in the Senate.