Federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint on June 3, charging Chinese student Haoxiang Gao with illegally voting in the 2024 presidential election.
Michigan officials had charged Gao for casting an illegal vote last year, after he approached a city clerk and tried to retract his ballot. They said Gao was studying at the University of Michigan and made a false affidavit that he had U.S. citizenship when registering for early voting in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
State officials said Gao’s vote had already been tabulated and it was impossible to retract.
The news drew criticism of the university’s partnership with China from Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), who chairs the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.
The committee had previously released a report naming the University of Michigan as one of the public universities that has a partnership with a Chinese university, and the lawmaker had called on the university to end the partnership. The university wrote in a letter to the lawmakers committee in January that it was ending its joint program with China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
Michigan had granted Gao a $5,000 personal bond on the condition that he surrender his passport and not leave the state, but Gao boarded a flight to Shanghai on Jan. 19, one day before the new administration was set to take office. He used a Chinese passport with a different number from the one he surrendered.
Federal prosecutors revealed last week that Gao had fled the country when a complaint was unsealed on May 30, charging him with fleeing prosecution.
“Illegal voting is a serious crime that casts doubt on our elections and serves to disenfranchise United States citizens by diluting their power at the ballot box. But illegal voting by a foreign national who is from a country controlled by a communist party dictatorship–with no modern history or tradition of democratic government–is beyond the pale,” U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan Jerome Gorgon said in a statement on June 3.
“I hope that today’s charges send a message to foreign nationals—including those who are students at our universities–that we will not tolerate illegal voting.”
The FBI is currently investigating the case.
Share your thoughts by scrolling down to leave a comment.
