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Voter fraud update: Non-citizen who registered to vote formally charged for false registration

Posted at 10:00 PM, Nov 04, 2016
and last updated 2016-11-05 01:17:49-04

A non-citizen who registered to vote in Arizona in order to prove a point has been charged as a result of that effort.

On Monday, ABC15 told the story of how the man, who has lived in the United States for more than two decades and has a green card, was joking with a coworker about the voter registration process and decided to fill out an application-- despite it being against the law for him to do so.

"The only thing I checked-- that I shouldn't have -- was 'Legal Citizen' but I assumed they were going to catch that," he said previously.

According to paperwork, the man, who ABC15 is now identifying as 38-year-old Alan Faygenblat, has been charged with false voter registration, a Class 6 felony, and forgery, a Class 4 felony.

Faygenblat, who authorities said is a legal U.S. resident originally from Israel, admitted when contacted by investigators that he filed the fraudulent voter application to prove the voting system is flawed.

When reached as part of the original story, a spokesperson for the Maricopa County Recorder's Office said Faygenblat was able to register because of a loophole in the system.

"We don't check citizenship based on a person's social security, we check on their driver's license," said spokeswoman Elizabeth Bartholomew. "Any person who got a driver's license after 1996 had to prove citizenship to the MVD. (The individual) had gotten a driver's license in 1994 so he did not need to prove citizenship. However, for some reason after 1996 he had to get a new license reissued to him and he was never scanned for citizenship at that point (the loophole)."

A spokesman for the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office said the jail had no record of Faygenblat, likely indicating he was never formally arrested on the charges he now faces.