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NEWARK, N.J. — <\/span>Federal prosecutors in New Jersey have charged four residents with illegally voting. <\/p>\n The U.S. attorney\u2019s office for New Jersey said in a statement Friday that the four people were not U.S. citizens when they registered to vote and cast ballots in federal elections, as federal law requires. <\/p>\n Their charges range from illegally voting in a federal election to making false statements when applying for citizenship and unlawful procurement of citizenship or naturalization. <\/p>\n Prosecutors say all four voted in at least one federal election from 2020 to 2024, a period that included two presidential elections and one midterm election. <\/p>\n They say the defendants, after casting ballots, then submitted applications for naturalization in which they falsely claimed to have never voted or registered to vote in a federal election.<\/p>\n U.S. Attorney Robert Frazer said the charges reflect his office’s \u201ccommitment to protecting the integrity of our election system.\u201d <\/p>\n Last year, the office launched a task force focused on election-related crimes such as voter registration fraud, casting of fraudulent ballots, voting by noncitizens and individuals voting multiple times in the same election.<\/p>\n Social media claims of widespread voter fraud surged after the 2020 election and have continued to be amplified by President Donald Trump<\/a> and his allies.<\/p>\n But current and former election officials have said such fraud is isolated and rare<\/a>. The country\u2019s elections are decentralized, with thousands of independent voting jurisdictions, which make it virtually impossible to pull off a large-scale vote-rigging operation that could tip an election, officials have told The Associated Press.<\/p>\n Frazer, a veteran prosecutor, was appointed in March<\/a>, ending a high profile standoff between the judiciary and the Trump administration over control of the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey. <\/p>\n Trump’s previous picks for the position, including his former personal attorney, Alina Habba<\/a>, had been disqualified.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n