Bergen County Resident Voted Illegally In Election, Feds Say

BERGEN COUNTY, NJ — A Bergen County woman was one of four New Jersey residents charged last week with having voted illegally in recent elections, officials said.

Jacenth Beadle Exum, 70, voted illegally in the 2020 election, said a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Newark on Friday.

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Exum was charged on Friday with two counts of false statements in relation to naturalization.

She was one of four New Jersey residents named in four different criminal complaints filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. All were announced in the same press release on Friday.

Each was from a different country outside of North America.

The others charged were Idan Choresh, 43, of Monmouth County, an Israeli national; David Neewilly, 73, of Atlantic County, a Liberian national; and Abhinandan Vig, 33, of Monmouth County, an Indian national.

According to the complaint filed against Exum, she came to the United States from Jamaica in 2000 on a visa. She registered to vote in Essex County in April of 2018, falsely claiming she was a citizen. She voted in November 2020.

In May 2021, she applied to be naturalized into citizenship. At the time, she lied and said she had never voted. She became a citizen in 2022.

The complaints did not indicate whom the arrestees supported in the elections.

Neewilly, a refugee from Liberia who was in the U.S. legally, voted in the 2003, 2004, 2005, 2020, and 2024 elections, his complaint says. Vig voted in the 2016 and 2020 election, and Choresh voted in the 2022 general election for House of Representatives, the release said.

They were charged after investigations by the District of New Jersey’s Election Integrity Task Force.

Choresh and Neewilly were charged with voting by an alien in a federal election, and Vig was charged with procurement of citizenship or naturalization unlawfully, the release said.

"The defendants broke federal law by voting in elections they were not eligible to participate in, and then made false statements under oath to conceal that conduct," Frazier said. "Today’s charges reflect this office’s commitment to protecting the integrity of our election system."

False statements in relation to naturalization, depending on the charge, carry a maximum penalty of five or ten years in prison.

154 Million Voters

According to the U.S. Census, in the 2024 presidential election, 73.6 percent of American citizens over 18 were registered to vote, representing 174 million people. 65.3 of the eligible population, or 154 million people, voted.

Read the complaints and release here.