Florida’s Only Fraudulent Voter: A Canadian Citizen

A Canadian man has pleaded guilty to multiple charges of falsely attesting to be a US citizen and illegally voting.

He is the one and only person convicted in Florida’s state-wide effort to purge illegal aliens who have unlawfully registered to vote.

Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Globe and Mail correspondent, Paul Koring, about this story.

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Marco Werman: When it comes to voting, officials in Florida say it’s their job to ask are you a US citizen? That’s why they launched a statewide effort to purge illegal aliens unlawfully registered to vote. Critics denounce the plan put forward by Florida’s Republican governor as an attempt to disenfranchise voters, particularly those with Spanish sounding names. The effort started with a list of 180,000 potential non-citizen voters. It’s ended with just one illegal alien voter, a 52-year-old Canadian named Josef Sever. Paul Koring has written about the case for Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper. So, Paul, this man Josef Sever has plead guilty to a number of felony charges. What has he actually admitted to doing?

Paul Koring: As part of his guilty plea he admitted that he’s voted twice in presidential elections, 2004 and 2008, but he’s also at least four times attested that he was a US citizen when he applied to purchase firearms and it seems at least one more time to get a concealed carry permit that allows you to carry a handgun in a pocket or inside your clothing in Florida.

Werman: And how long has Mr. Sever been in the US pulling off this fraud?

Koring: We did a bit of a search of documents and it looks like in 1998 he may have been signing documents for corporate, to register some sort of consulting company in Florida. So when he actually came to the United States isn’t entirely clear, and of course, Canadians can come to the United States without a Visa. Millions of them do every year as visitors and certainly there are lots of Canadians who go to Florida to retire, but you can’t stay here, and you can’t work here, and you certainly can’t vote here.

Werman: Now the reason Mr. Sever’s case is of interest is because it’s part of a larger Republican effort to impose stricter voter identification measures. Some say it’s to prevent fraud, others see it as a scheme to disenfranchise poorer voters and Obama supporters. How widespread are the voter ID laws?

Koring: The requirements are the same. You have to be a US citizen, but in some states you can simply attest you are. In others different forms of documentation need to be produced, and certainly what’s going on right now is this sort of groundswell of effort primarily in Republican controlled states to cull the voters lists, to go and see if people are unlawfully on voters lists. And critics of those efforts regard them as a way of disenfranchising the poor and African Americans and people who might vote for democrats, but it’s all done under the quite legitimate and legal plain that it’s important that only United States citizens vote in United States elections. I think the underlying issue is whether or not illegal aliens of which there are, depending on who’s counting, somewhere between 15 and 20 million of them in the United States, are the kind of people who would actively seek out authorities and get themselves on voting lists. Certainly most people would argue the opposite, that if you’re an illegal alien in this country you try and stay below the horizon, you try and have as little contact with the government as possible…that maybe you register to get your kid into school or to get a drivers license if you absolutely need one, but actually go and get yourself on a voter’s list so you can, so you have the right to vote, seems really risky.

Werman: I mean in the case of Mr. Sever, his desire to vote seems to have been his undoing. Has he stated why he registered to vote?

Koring: No, we haven’t heard from him. He’s been in custody since July. In his brief court appearance he simply plead guilty. He signed a proffer from which we know most of the details of the cases, and what impelled him to seek to masquerade as a United States citizen is entirely unclear. It’s not clear whether it was because he wanted to get a firearms permit first. I guess it’s important to him or was important to him to take part in the political process.

Werman: Did he saw whether he voted Republican or democrat?

Koring: He didn’t say how he voted and he did register with no party affiliation, so there’s no hint as to whether he was a democrat or Republican, but at least some of the bloggers in Florida who picked up on this have had some fun suggesting he fits the profile of the kind of guy that might very well have been voting Republican, but we simply don’t know.

Werman: What happens to Mr. Sever now?

Koring: His sentencing is a few days after the election. He certainly could get up to five years for each of the gun counts and he could get one year for each of the falsely attesting to being a US citizen on the voting fraud counts. Whether or not he gets a custodial sentence or whether he’s simply deported, once he’s finished his time in prison he will be going back to Canada.

Werman: Paul Koring, a correspondent for Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper, speaking to us from Washington. Thanks very much, Paul.

Koring: Thank you.

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