What do you do if you’re a U.S. attorney who wants to gain political cred with Trumpworld? For one prosecutor, North Carolina’s Bobby Higdon, the answer appears to be prosecuting noncitizens for voting, TPM’s Allegra Kirkland reports. The state election board found 41 noncitizens among the 4.8 million people voting in the 2016 election in North Carolina, and Higdon seems determined to prosecute each and every one of them … even though his office ignored multiple tips about the serious Republican-executed election fraud that just led to a new election being called in the 9th Congressional District.
In August 2018, Higdon announced charges against 19 people, most of them legal permanent residents confused about their voting status. One actually presented her green card at the polls, a clear sign that she was acting in good, if misinformed, faith. A judge fined her just $100. A U.S. citizen and former volunteer poll worker who did get two months of jail time for registering her noncitizen boyfriend to vote told the court that she had hoped a current poll worker would tell her boyfriend if he was indeed eligible, and “The reason it happened is because there was no training about whether or not legal aliens could vote―never―all of the elections I’ve ever worked. And I truly didn’t know.”
Higdon hadn’t previously seemed interested in voting issues, having spent years as a prosecutor focusing mostly on drug crimes—and losing one job “after a federal appeals court expressed grave concerns that prosecutors under his leadership had withheld evidence.” But he’s all-in now, and the reasons aren’t hard to guess. “Bobby has always been a diehard, unapologetic conservative Republican and proud of it,” one of his former coworkers told TPM. “Bobby is quite ambitious politically,” said another North Carolina lawyer. And in today’s Republican Party, going after vulnerable people who acted out of confusion and ignorance is a more sure-fire way to fulfill ambitions than, say, clamping down on all-out election fraud being conducted by Republicans.