26 States Pick New Secretaries of State This November as DOJ Prosecutes Real Noncitizen Voting Cases

Twenty-six states will elect a secretary of state this November, according to a column by Mark Z. Barabak of the Los Angeles Times that was syndicated across several outlets. Whoever wins runs the machinery that certifies the 2028 presidential election in most of the country. Both parties are treating a normally sleepy office like a battleground.

The 'election denier' warning

Barabak's column, and a companion Guardian report, point to a slate of Republican candidates who voted against certifying the 2020 results or have publicly questioned them. Arizona governor candidate and sitting congressman Andy Biggs voted against certifying both Arizona's and Pennsylvania's 2020 electoral votes on January 6, 2021, and called for an audit of Arizona's results. That audit, run by then-state senate president Warren Petersen, ended up affirming Joe Biden's win in the state. Petersen is now the Republican nominee for Arizona attorney general.

In Wisconsin, gubernatorial candidate and congressman Tom Tiffany also voted against certifying the 2020 results. The Guardian reports candidates for governor in Pennsylvania and Michigan have similarly cast doubt on 2020, though it did not name all of them in the material reviewed. The Guardian says none of the candidates it asked responded to questions about who they believe won in 2020 or whether they'd certify results in 2028.

Barabak's piece also notes that a group called the America First SOS Coalition endorsed 14 secretary of state candidates in 2022, and every one of them lost except a candidate in Indiana. Tina Peters, the former Mesa County, Colorado elections chief who went to prison over a security breach meant to 'prove' 2020 fraud, is cited as one of that slate's most notorious losers. Trump carried Mesa County by nearly 30 points that year. The coalition's website, Barabak notes, now redirects to an online gambling site. PBS NewsHour aired its own segment on the same theme August 18, with correspondent Liz Landers reporting on election-denying candidates running for governor and secretary of state in battleground states.

The other track: actual prosecutions

While that debate plays out over what candidates believe, a separate and factually distinct story is unfolding. The Justice Department is prosecuting real people for illegal voting.

The DOJ announced charges against five people in a multi-state case spanning Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Wisconsin, tied to the 2022 and 2024 elections, according to Fox News Digital. Two of the five are illegal immigrants and two are noncitizens with legal status. One of them, Katya Rodriguez, 30, an illegal immigrant from Mexico living in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was indicted for allegedly voting in the 2024 election after falsely certifying her citizenship, and faces up to 11 years in prison if convicted. White House spokesperson Lauren Bis told Fox News Digital, 'Any non-citizens found registering to vote and voting in our elections will be held accountable.'

Separately, prosecutors in Massachusetts allege Yupeng Sun registered to vote and cast a ballot using the identity of a lawful permanent resident who was also ineligible to vote, according to the Epoch Times. Malden city officials say they found no problem with the registration or ballot before federal investigators flagged it, raising questions about whether local election offices currently have the tools to catch this kind of impersonation on their own, or whether it takes a federal probe to surface it.

A Colombian national was sentenced to three years for identity theft after voting in multiple elections, and a Bridgeport, Connecticut city council member, Alfredo Castillo, rejected a plea deal and now faces trial on election fraud charges carrying a potential sentence of up to 165 years, per the Epoch Times.

The federal push, and its limits

The DOJ has sued nearly 30 states to obtain confidential voter rolls and has redirected Homeland Security Investigations, an agency historically focused on cartels and terrorism, toward hunting unlawfully registered noncitizens, Fox News Digital reported. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem also warned states about voting machines containing Chinese-made parts, and announced New Jersey agreed to cooperate with DHS on voter roll access after previously resisting, according to the Epoch Times.

Critics of the push raise a legitimate concern: noncitizen voting, while real in these prosecuted cases, is not documented in these sources as widespread enough to swing elections, and a federal effort to pull voter rolls from 30 states raises legitimate questions about scope, privacy and whether it's proportionate to the problem it's solving. The Rodriguez and Sun cases are specific, charged, and moving through federal court, not vague accusations.

Trump's separate executive order limiting mail voting has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge, per Barabak, with the administration's appeal potentially headed to the Supreme Court. A different federal judge separately found the U.S. Postal Service violated her injunction on mail-ballot handling rules, but let the underlying rule stand anyway, according to the Epoch Times' Tom Gantert. On the fear that troops might show up at polling places, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine told reporters he has not received, and does not expect, any unlawful order to deploy the military to polling sites in November, per the Epoch Times.

Voters weighing the secretary of state races in November should separate two different questions: whether a candidate has cast doubt on 2020, and whether DOJ's prosecutions of actual illegal voting are legitimate law enforcement. The sources here support both as real, ongoing, and unresolved.