A British National has been arrested in Florida for allegedly illegally voting six times in U.S. elections and falsely claiming U.S. citizenship.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) said this week that 65-year-old James Ross Wightman had been previously deported from the United States in 1989 and later entered the country illegally, voting in several local and national elections. Per Newsweek:
According to the FDLE, Wightman was voluntarily deported from the United States in September 1989 after overstaying his visitor visa and facing drug charges in Hawaii.
He returned to the United States in November 2000 and submitted a voter registration application with a false claim of U.S. citizenship.
In November 2013, authorities say Wightman presented a fraudulent Ohio birth certificate to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles to renew his Florida driver’s license. The Ohio Department of Health has confirmed that no such birth certificate exists.
Wightman participated in as many as six local and national elections between 2022 and 2024. Since 2013, he has had no party afifiliation.
“Voting is a civic duty for every American citizen. James Wightman knew that he was not an American citizen having previously left for the United Kingdom when facing deportation,” Katherine Fernandez Rundle, Miami-Dade County State Attorney said in a statement.
According to NBC Miami, Wightman “has been booked at a state correction center and will face trial on his charges.” It remains unknown if he will be deported.
Read the full article here
