Over the weekend a video clip posted by RNC Research of the Sheriff of San Joaquin County saying, “You’re able to register and cast a vote if you don’t live in the country,” and stating that a Pakistani citizen voted in a California election went viral.
San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office: “You’re able to register and cast a vote if you don’t live in the country.”
Care to explain?pic.twitter.com/uzEWh4X4G4 https://t.co/QJvhNtLKeT
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 5, 2026
Many social media users were wondering if this actually happened and if what he said about the “honor system” of registering to vote online in California is correct; yes, it did, and yes, he’s correct. Shakir Khan, a Pakistani immigrant and now-former city councilman from Lodi, California, was arrested in February, 2023 and charged with 14 felonies related to election fraud. RedState covered the news at that time; the original story can be viewed here. Khan pleaded no contest to those charges in January 2024, but recently made a motion to have that plea set aside and is petitioning the court for mental health diversion.
But the details of what Khan allegedly did are even more alarming than what’s stated in this weekend’s viral tweets. This case is a grab bag of every worst-case scenario that can come out of the combination of online voter registration, universal mail ballots, and ballot harvesting.
Here are the highlights (more detail can be found in the 2023 story, and all of it is taken from the press conference at the end of this piece):
- During a raid of Khan’s home in October 2020 on unrelated charges, officials observed a stash of 41 sealed and completed mail ballots for the 2020 presidential election. Due to CA’s ballot harvesting laws the ballots were not seized, but investigators photographed the ballots and documented their findings.
- In the fall of 2021, officials noticed 70 people were registered to vote at one address in Lodi, which they recognized as Khan’s.
- Sheriff’s investigators determined that Khan had used the state’s online voter registration system to re-register existing California voters from other districts to his address, and at least a few non-citizens living in foreign countries (including his brother in Pakistan) to vote using his address, email address, or phone number.
- Investigators reviewed the ballot return envelopes from ballots cast in the 2020 general election, which had been maintained by the Registrar, and found that many of those tied to Khan’s address all had the same handwriting on the outside.
- In October 2022, officials found more than a dozen unopened ballots for the mid-term election, none of them addressed to Khan and many not sent to his address, at his home.
- Officials also found Khan’s nomination form for his city council candidacy, and determined that numerous signatures on it were forged.
- Khan forced voters whose information he’d hijacked to vote for him and for Joe Biden, either by filling them out himself or threatening the voter.
- When Khan heard that investigators were speaking to people he’d fraudulently registered to vote, he posted a video to TikTok to threaten and intimidate them.
How could Khan have registered so many people to vote, without appropriate documentation, then cast those ballots and have them counted?
The short answer is that California’s VoteCal system enables it, despite Governor Gavin Newsom’s protestations.
San Joaquin County Registrar Olivia Hale broke down how that online system works in a press conference announcing Khan’s arrest:
- Potential voter (or fraudster) goes online to either the Secretary of State’s site or the California DMV to register or update their current registration.
- First-time voters simply check a box attesting that they’re a U.S. citizen to “prove” citizenship.
- Potential voters provide a California drivers license number or California ID number, or the last four of their Social Security Number, as identification.
- Registration information flows into the state’s VoteCal database then sent to the county registrar.
- At the county registrar’s office, staff ensure that there is an entry in the field for either the California ID number or last four of the Social Security Number, then move the registration from pending to active.
- County staff only have access to the signature on file at the DMV if the registration at issue came about from a voter updating their registration at the DMV.
It should be noted that under California law, county registrars are not authorized to verify a voter’s citizenship. Even under federal law, a voter is only required to attest under penalty of perjury that they are a U.S. citizen. Sure, California requires either a drivers license number, state ID number, or the last four of a Social Security Number to be provided, but those aren’t verified against any database that would definitively determine citizenship (especially since California is a sanctuary state).
Once the registration is active, since California is now has universal mail-in ballots for each election, those mail ballots will go to the voter’s address on file.
So, as the Sheriff pointed out, in Shakir Khan’s case, he fraudulently re-registered existing voters, many of them Pakistani immigrants, to his address, then forced them to vote the way he told them to. Why would they be intimidated by him, one might ask? Well, those unrelated charges that led to the October 2020 search warrant and raid at Khan’s home were related to an illegal gambling operation and organized crime, and Khan is alleged to have been the leader of that ring.
Investigators shared bodycam footage of their interviews with several people whose voting privileges were essentially stolen by Khan.
In this video, a voter confirms that he did not sign Khan’s candidate nomination form.
Khan told this voter how to fill out the ballot, and told them, “One for me, and one for Biden.”
Another person told investigators that Khan took her ID until she filled out her ballot in the way he instructed.
Investigators also played video from interviews with voters who were properly registered to vote, but not in Khan’s district, who were re-registered by Khan with Khan’s address, so they would be eligible to vote for him for City Council. Those voters confirmed that they had not moved and did not consent to Khan re-registering them, but were intimidated into going along with his scheme.
It’s not hard to imagine how people in positions of power over others can use the combination of universal mail-in ballots and ballot harvesting for nefarious purposes. Say you’re a union boss, and you know that all of the members of your local are receiving ballots to their home. Especially if some of those members are illegal aliens, you now have huge leverage and can force them to fill out their ballots in a particular way and turn them in right there at work.
Say you run a homeless shelter. What’s to stop you from encouraging all of your clients to register to vote there, then forcing them to fill out their ballots in a certain way?
And the list goes on.
The anomalies on the San Joaquin County voter rolls weren’t limited to what was going on at Khan’s address. As the Sheriff said in the press conference:
They noticed that… one person was registered to vote with a birth date of 1850. There were 232 people registered to vote with the address to our local prisons. There were 4,144 people that were 90 years old and older. There were 125 people on the voter rolls that were registered to – their address comes back to nonprofit NGO’s and different businesses.
There were approximately 300 people with no first name, just a last name….
There were 110 people that were possible double voters, basically the same name, date of birth, and address, but different voter ID numbers.
People were registered to vote at various shelters and all that. We even found one person on the voter rolls by the name of Jesus Christ, which we found interesting.
This is just one county in California, and we know that there are other counties that are probably in much worse shape (looking at you, Los Angeles). I’d also bet that other states have similar flaws in their voter registration system, and now that there are six states with universal mail-in ballots for all elections and two more that use universal mail-in ballots for general elections, the risk of bad actors using fraud and/or intimidation tactics to game the system is spreading.
While both the San Joaquin County Sheriff and the Registrar stated that there were potential federal election laws broken by Mr. Khan, the Biden Department of Justice was completely uninterested in pursuing any charges. And California’s Department of Justice, led by scandal-ridden Attorney General Rob Bonta, has been more focused on preventing Huntington Beach from enacting a voter ID requirement than ensuring that this immigrant population receive justice after being threatened by this thug.
Shakir Khan remains out on bond despite entering a no contest plea to 14 election fraud felonies and still has not been sentenced.
Read the full text of the criminal complaint filed against Khan:
KhanComplaint February 17 by Jennifer Van Laar on Scribd
The entire press conference can be viewed here:
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