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  • 2016-09-29 (xsd:date)
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  • Accused Cascade Mall Shooter Arcan Cetin Voted as a Non-Citizen? (en)
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  • On 24 September 2016, Washington State resident Arcan Cetin was arrested for the 23 September 2016 shooting at the Cascade Mall in Burlington, Washington, in which five people were killed. Afterwards,Seattle-area radio station KVI reported that Cetin had registered and voted in Washington state despite his status as a non-citizen. Seattle's KING-TV provided a slightly more detailed version of the story: However, shortly afterwards KING reported that Cetin was in fact a naturalized citizen: The topic of legal permanent residents gaining the right to vote has been debated in Seattle and was the subject of a ballot initiative in 2015: The 2015 ballot initiative was largely of interest to green card holders aware of their voting restrictions. But in 2010, the New York Times reported that it wasn't uncommon for legal permanent residents to vote and unwittingly break the law, believing that their exercising a common civic duty was neither illegal nor discouraged. One legal permanent resident facing deportation stated that he had unknowingly broken the law by registering to vote 18 years prior, eight years after immigrating to the United States: United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) doesn't record instances of non-citizens voting, but the Times stated that [m]any election law experts said there was no evidence that the violations happened frequently — or at least enough to skew election results. A New York metro-area legal aid group said that at least eight green card holders faced deportation for registering to vote in the years before the 2010 article was published, having inadvertently broken the law (and jeopardized their immigration status) in most instances. A lawyer and former immigration judge concurred, stating that most legal permanent resident voters were under the impression they were allowed and encouraged to vote. A USCIS spokesman confirmed that immigrants were not apprised of the restriction when granted their green cards, possibly adding to the confusion: As the Times noted, both green card holders and registration volunteers are often befuddled by the intermittent ability of legal permanent residents to vote in some elections, exacerbated by a tacit assumption on the part of ineligible voters that their registrations would have been rejected by municipalities were they not permitted to participate. Complicating matters in Cetin's case was that he emigrated from Turkey as a small child and may not have been fully aware of the restrictions forbidding legal permanent residents from voting. However, Washington state voter registrations indicate that Cetin registered to vote on 27 September 2014 and subsequently participated in two elections: Washington's Secretary of State confirmed that in addition to charges relating to the mall shooting, Arcan Cetin could face additional penalties for alleged illegal voting. (en)
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