Texas county targets illegal voting
Harris County, Texas, of which Houston is the seat, is going after foreign nationals who vote in our elections:
Officials are investigating how at least 35 foreign citizens, and possibly dozens more, were allowed to vote in elections in Harris county.
One of those illegal voters was a 73-year-old Brazilian woman whose registration was canceled in 1996 after she acknowledged on a jury summons that she was not a U.S. citizen.
But the following year she was again given a new voter card, which wasn't discovered until recently. Records show that since 1997 the woman voted at least four times in general and Democratic primary elections, most recently in November.
Last year, at least 35 foreign citizens either applied for or received voter cards by checking a box on the application saying they were U.S. citizens, said Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt, who also is the county's voter registrar.
"If they check yes and they're not a citizen, there is no database that is open to the public that I know of that you can check against," he said.
Bettencourt is investigating at least 70 other possible violators and will send a list of suspected offenders to the Harris County district attorney.