Authorities announced Friday the arrest of James Ross Wightman, a 65-year-old British national living illegally in the U.S., for casting votes in six South Florida elections. Wightman, who was deported from the U.S. over three decades ago, was apprehended in Miami Beach and faces six counts of illegal voting.
According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), Wightman had been registered to vote in Miami-Dade County since November 2000, using a South Beach apartment on Pennsylvania Avenue as his listed address. Despite being a non-citizen, records show Wightman falsely claimed U.S. citizenship and participated in local and national elections in 2022, 2023, and 2024.
Wightman was originally deported in 1989 following a drug-related arrest in Hawaii. Authorities say that after his illegal return to the U.S., he used fraudulent documents to live and operate within the country. In November 2013, Wightman allegedly presented a fake Ohio birth certificate to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles to renew his driver’s license.
The FDLE conducted the investigation in collaboration with federal agencies and the Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections Office, uncovering that Wightman had not only reentered the country illegally but also voted multiple times while posing as a U.S. citizen.
Wightman was taken into custody on Friday and booked into the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center in Miami.
