This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.
Michigan’s attorney general announced Thursday she was charging five noncitizens for allegedly voting in the 2024 general election, plus one U.S. citizen accused of registering their noncitizen spouse to vote.
Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, made the announcement more than a year after her office announced she was investigating 13 potential noncitizen voters referred by the Michigan Department of State. Thursday’s announcement encompassed those referrals as well as 25 other people referred more recently on similar allegations.
In addition to the six who were charged, 10 of those cases have been closed without charges, and 22 remain under investigation. In addition, the voter registration of every identified noncitizen — including several who were not charged — has been canceled.
“We’re upholding election integrity by investigating all claims of non-citizen voters, as rare as they are, and holding bad actors accountable when they refuse to abide by the laws that keep our elections safe and secure,” Nessel said in a news release announcing the charges. “These charges reflect the severity of the allegations, the sanctity of our democracy, and the tremendous consequences of voting illegally— whether that’s done to try and ‘test’ security measures or to make an unlawful vote count.”
Noncitizen voting has been a top concern of conservative lawmakers and activists across the U.S. for several years, with a renewed emphasis during President Donald Trump’s second term. It is extremely rare in Michigan and across the U.S.
6 people charged in connection with noncitizen voting in Michigan
The six people were each arraigned between April and earlier this week, according to Nessel’s office. Of the six, three live in the U.S. as lawful permanent residents, while a fourth is a limited-term alien resident. Only U.S. citizens — not lawful permanent residents or noncitizens with any other residency status — can vote in state and federal elections.
Michael Akioya is accused of registering to vote in Inkster in 2016 and voting in the 2024 election in Oak Park via absentee ballot. He is a lawful permanent resident, Nessel’s office said, but not a citizen. He is charged with making false statements on an absentee ballot application and envelope.
Harumi Michael is accused of registering and voting in person in 2024 in Commerce Township despite being only a lawful permanent resident. She is charged with two counts of election law forgery, one count of making a false statement when registering to vote, and one count of being an unqualified elector attempting to vote.
Robert Piva, another lawful permanent resident, registered to vote online in September 2024 and voted early in Roseville the next month, according to the attorney general’s office. He “claimed his vote was an experiment concerning voter fraud,” according to the news release. He is charged with one count each of election law perjury, fraudulent registration, and being an unqualified elector attempting to vote.
Alondra Harker, a limited-term alien resident, allegedly registered and voted in person in the 2024 general election in Three Rivers. She is charged with fraudulently registering to vote.
Kimberly DiDonato, an American citizen, allegedly posed as her husband, a lawful permanent resident, and registered him to vote in 2024 while claiming he was a citizen. According to the news release, DiDonato “claimed her intent was to test the registration system for vulnerabilities to unqualified voter registrants” and she canceled the registration a month later. She has been charged with election law forgery and using a computer to commit a crime.
Her attorney, former Republican attorney general candidate Kevin Kijewski, noted that DiDonato’s case was lumped together with a number of “very different” cases.
“No ballot was cast, and the registration was canceled in May 2024 after it was brought to the township clerk’s attention,” he said in a text message Thursday.
The final person announced Thursday, Basanth Sadasivian, is a noncitizen residing in the U.K. who allegedly registered to vote by email using the Federal Post Card Application — which allows military personnel and other U.S. citizens living abroad to register and vote — using a Bloomfield Hills address. He voted in the general election in 2024 through that same system, according to Nessel’s office, and is charged with one count of being an unqualified elector attempting to vote.
Michael’s and Harker’s attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday. Attorneys could not be immediately located for Akioya, Piva, and Sadasivian.
“This is how the system works under the law. The same process that produced these investigations and criminal charges is the process we use every time we receive allegations of illegal voter activity,” Deputy Secretary of State Aghogho Edevbie said in a statement Thursday. “The people of Michigan deserve to know that each case is thoroughly investigated, those investigations are pursued based on evidence, and that anyone found to have broken the law is held accountable.”
He further encouraged people not to “test the system,” noting that people who break the law in order to do so will be held accountable.
Others investigated as part of ongoing efforts
The attorney general’s office also announced that 10 people who had been under investigation for noncitizen voting or “adjacent conduct” would not be charged. Of those, two were found to be citizens, while another was “subject to a complicated international adoption” and is presumed to be a citizen. A fourth person, while not fully considered a citizen, is federally recognized as an American Indian born in Canada; such individuals are often referred to as “dual citizens” in their paperwork, according to the release.
Nessel’s office also declined to charge five legal permanent residents who had voted — some of them in several different elections — as well as one noncitizen with authorization to work in the U.S., because it felt there was not enough proof to do so. To secure a prosecution, the government must prove these people knew they were unqualified to vote and that they weren’t encouraged to register by the government itself.
Nessel’s investigations aren’t the only ones ongoing in the state. Anthony Forlini, the Macomb County clerk and the Republican candidate for secretary of state this fall, has been using jury pools to try to find noncitizens on the voter rolls for much of the year, despite warnings against that from the Department of State.
Forlini applauded Nessel on Thursday.
“Good elections are a non-partisan topic and both parties need to take this seriously,” he said in a statement shared on social media Thursday. “This is just the beginning of what I am uncovering. This is not a small matter. This is an infrastructure issue that needs to be fixed.”
Noncitizen voting a staple of political conversation in Michigan
Previously, only one person — a University of Michigan student from China — was publicly charged with voting in the 2024 election in Michigan despite not being a U.S. citizen. That student, Haoxiang Gao, was later charged with fleeing the country.
Despite its rarity, noncitizen voting has remained a focus of Republican elected officials. Rep. Bryan Posthumus, a Republican from Rockford, began the state legislative session last year by introducing an amendment to the Michigan Constitution that would require would-be voters to prove their citizenship. That ultimately failed to move forward in the legislature, but proponents are hoping to put a similar constitutional amendment before voters this fall.
The group Americans for Citizen Voting submitted more than 750,000 signatures in March in support of that effort. The Board of State Canvassers will decide later this month whether it will make the November ballot.
It’s not just Michigan where that’s a focus. Trump has made implementing a federal proof-of-citizenship requirement one of his top priorities, repeatedly calling on Congress to pass the SAVE America Act (the bill, though, lacks the votes to pass the Senate). In an effort to root out noncitizens on the voter rolls, the Department of Justice has also requested unredacted information on voters from every state; Michigan is one of 30 that have refused to comply and is locked in a legal battle with the federal government over the issue.
The Trump administration last month also sent letters to every state’s top election official warning that they could face criminal prosecution if they knowingly allow noncitizens to vote or be registered to vote.
Trump has claimed for years that noncitizen voting is a widespread problem in the U.S., even though election officials and independent audits have found no more than a handful of examples. Most recently, Trump said last month during a primetime speech that there are more than 270,000 noncitizens registered to vote nationwide, although he provided no evidence or details about how he arrived at that number.
Rep. Rachelle Smit, a Republican from Martin and the chair of the House Election Integrity Committee, said in a statement that she “truly believe[s] Michigan is the epicenter of the problem.”
“The charges filed today are just the tip of the iceberg, and further underscore exactly why the U.S. Senate must approve the SAVE Act to safeguard our elections and ensure only U.S. citizens are voting in our elections,” she said.
Danny Wimmer, a spokesperson for the Michigan attorney general’s office, said the investigations and ultimate charges were “not impacted by any external focus appearing in recent weeks or months.”
In fact, in her release, Nessel criticized the Trump administration for making it harder to identify the noncitizen voters. “The federal government has not always provided easy or open access to certain necessary citizenship records,” she said, noting that this delayed her investigation.
“While the question of whether any given resident is a citizen may feel simple, some cases are nuanced in unexpected ways,” Nessel said.
Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.
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