Michigan will count ballot of Chinese national charged with voting illegally

DETROIT — A Chinese national studying at the University of Michigan faces criminal charges after voting illegally — but the vote will still count.While the Michigan secretary of state portrayed the 19-year-old’s illegal vote as an “an extremely isolated and rare event,” the vote was self-reported, not ferreted out by election officials.The student is charged with perjury and voting illegally.“The student’s ballot is expected to count in the upcoming election — although it was illegally cast — because there is no way for election officials to retrieve it once it’s been put through a tabulator, according to two sources familiar with Michigan election laws.

The setup is meant to prevent ballots from being tracked back to an individual voter,” the Detroit News reports.GOP state Sen.Lana Theis has warned of Michigan’s election-security shortcomings for years.

Same-day voter registration does not require an identification; election officials take people’s word they’re whom they claim to be.Despite the vulnerability, Theis agrees there is no way to retrieve a ballot once it is cast and doesn’t think there should be — the ballot would no longer be a secret.Theis explained that if election officials could retrieve this particular ballot, matching a specific ballot to a specific voter, they could retrieve any.

And that would be the end of the secret ballot as we know it.“The ballot that you voted is sitting in a sleeve that’s not attributable to you,” Theis told The Post.“It’s in an envelope that’s kind of a blank envelope but the numbers sticking out of the top.

So they pull off that perforated piece, and now this thing cannot be identified to you at all in any way.That’s your secret ballot.”She added: “Once it goes through the machine, there’s no way to identify it, to track it back to you, which is necessary in order for you to have your secret ballot.”Matt Hall, House Republican leader in the Legislature, said the...