A 39-year-old French citizen living in Toms River, New Jersey, has pleaded guilty to casting an illegal ballot in the November 2022 federal midterm election, and his attorney says the state's automatic voter registration system is what put him on the rolls in the first place.
Eliezer Kadoch entered his plea before U.S. Magistrate Judge J. Brandon Day in Trenton federal court, admitting to the charge of voting by an alien in a federal election. He now faces up to six months in federal prison and a fine of up to $100,000. Sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 26.
The case lays bare a question that election integrity advocates have raised for years: when states hand out voter registrations alongside driver's licenses, how many noncitizens end up on the rolls, and how many actually vote?
Kadoch's attorney, Yosef Jacobovitch, told Fox News Digital that his client was automatically registered to vote when he obtained a New Jersey driver's license. Jacobovitch said Kadoch "mistakenly believed" that registration meant he was legally permitted to cast a ballot.
"Mr. Kadoch accepted responsibility for his actions.... There was never any intent to violate the law or cast an unlawful ballot. Unfortunately, the offense to which he pleaded guilty does not require proof of criminal intent, and he now fully understands that."
That last line deserves a second look. The charge does not require prosecutors to prove Kadoch meant to break the law. The act itself, a noncitizen casting a vote in a federal election, is the crime. Intent is irrelevant. Yet the defense framing invites sympathy by suggesting the system led an unwitting foreign national into a federal offense.
Maybe it did. But that only makes the system's design more troubling, not less.
The case was brought by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey through its Election Integrity Task Force, described as a coalition of federal law enforcement partners dedicated to preserving election integrity in the state. U.S. Attorney Robert Frazer noted the task force's role in bringing the prosecution.
FBI special agents, Homeland Security Investigations, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services all participated in the joint investigation that led to Kadoch's guilty plea. Court documents confirmed that Kadoch is a citizen of France and has never held U.S. citizenship.
His immigration status, however, was not publicly released. That gap matters. It is one thing for a legal permanent resident to stumble into an automatic registration. It is another for someone without lawful status to do so. The public does not yet know which category applies here.
Kadoch's case is not isolated. Four other noncitizens were recently charged with illegally voting in federal elections in New Jersey, spanning the 2020, 2022, and 2024 cycles. Whether those cases are connected to Kadoch's prosecution or arose independently remains unclear.
Fox News Digital contacted the New Jersey Department of State, the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission, and the Ocean County Clerk's Office for comment. None responded immediately.
That silence speaks volumes. The defense attorney's central claim, that Kadoch was automatically registered when he got his driver's license, raises an obvious follow-up: does New Jersey's system verify citizenship before placing someone on the voter rolls? If it does, how did Kadoch slip through? If it doesn't, how many others have?
No state official stepped forward to answer either question.
The broader pattern is not limited to New Jersey. The America First Policy Institute, a nonprofit that has studied noncitizen voter registration risks tied to automatic registration and driver's license systems, identified thirteen states that have investigated noncitizens on their voter rolls in recent years: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Montana, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Virginia. AFPI has also drafted model legislation that would require proof of citizenship to vote and mandate audits to ensure noncitizens are not on voter rolls.
Kadoch's guilty plea lands in the middle of an intensifying national debate over who is on America's voter rolls and what safeguards exist to keep ineligible voters off them. Federal efforts to clean up those rolls have gained momentum. The DOJ has sued dozens of states over access to voter roll data, and investigations have turned up hundreds of thousands of dead voters still listed as active.
The Department of Homeland Security has directed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport illegal immigrants who vote in American elections, a policy that underscores the federal government's stated seriousness about the issue.
Yet legislative efforts to tighten the front door have stalled. A Senate vote on the SAVE Act, which would have required proof of citizenship to register, failed when some Republicans joined Democrats in blocking the amendment. That outcome left reformers without the statutory fix they say is needed to prevent cases like Kadoch's from recurring.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department's own posture on election integrity has drawn scrutiny from both sides. Acting Attorney General Blanche has pledged public disclosure of evidence related to election irregularities, a move that signals the current DOJ views voter fraud prosecutions as a priority rather than a distraction.
The facts here are narrow. One man. One illegal vote. One guilty plea. Defenders of automatic voter registration will argue that a single case proves the system largely works, that bad actors are caught and punished.
But that argument assumes every noncitizen who registers and votes gets caught. Nothing in the record supports that assumption. The thirteen states that have conducted audits found noncitizens on their rolls. The federal task force that prosecuted Kadoch exists precisely because the problem is not theoretical.
And the defense attorney's own explanation undercuts the "nothing to see here" line. If a French citizen can walk into a New Jersey motor vehicle office, obtain a driver's license, get automatically registered to vote, and then cast a ballot in a congressional election believing it was legal, the system did not work. It failed at the most basic checkpoint.
Kadoch did not hack a voting machine. He did not forge documents. He filled out a form at the DMV, and the state of New Jersey did the rest. He is not the only noncitizen facing charges for casting an illegal ballot in recent elections.
The question is not whether noncitizen voting happens. Kadoch just pleaded guilty to it. The question is whether the states that make it easy will ever be forced to make it hard.