Afshin Masheli is an Iranian non-citizen. He's a convicted rapist. He's currently sitting in a Michigan jail for child sex crimes. And according to the state of Michigan, he's an active voter who has already cast ballots in three federal and state elections.
That's not a hypothetical. That's the O'Keefe Media Group's latest undercover video, released on August 8th.
James O'Keefe teased the footage on August 4th, writing, "We've caught what you've always suspected regarding voter fraud on camera." He wasn't exaggerating. The video documents two Iranian non-citizens — Masheli and a second man, Fazlohhah Haritash, also imprisoned for child sex crimes — who are registered and active on Michigan's voter rolls. One of them already voted. Three times.
Masheli isn't some guy who slipped through a crack. He appeared on the Department of Homeland Security's "Worst of the Worst" list. ICE can't even deport him to Iran--they don't want him back. But Michigan had no trouble letting him participate in democracy.
The second non-citizen, Haritash, remains registered as an active voter out of a Farmington Hills mosque. He hasn't been deported either. He's just sitting in a cell, technically eligible to request an absentee ballot.
O'Keefe's team also captured Dearborn election officials on camera agreeing to allow ineligible voters to participate. Not in a gotcha ambush — in what appeared to be routine processing. The system didn't fail. The system worked exactly as designed. There just isn't a system.
Which makes Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson's public statements land a little differently now.
Benson — who is currently running for governor of Michigan after Gretchen Whitmer termed out — testified before the U.S. House Committee on House Administration and assured Congress, "We're doing everything we can to ensure that non-citizens are not able to vote." During an October 2024 interview, she added, "There's no evidence that non-citizens are voting."
No evidence. Except a convicted rapist on DHS's worst-of-the-worst list who voted three times. And a child predator still listed as active. And election officials waving people through on camera.
The Detroit 2020 Election Inspection team — including Phani Mantravadi, who created the Check My Vote service for Michigan voter rolls, and Patty McMurray — had previously identified non-citizens on the DHS list appearing on Michigan voter rolls as far back as May 2024. Benson's office was aware of the problem before she testified it didn't exist.
The standard defense from election officials is that non-citizen voting is "extremely rare" and "not a systemic issue." The framing is always statistical: out of millions of ballots, the number is negligible. But that argument requires you to believe the only cases that exist are the ones that get caught — in a system with essentially no verification mechanism to catch them.
Michigan doesn't require proof of citizenship to register. The state relies on a checkbox. An applicant attests, under penalty of perjury, that they are a U.S. citizen. That's the whole security apparatus. A checkbox and the threat of a crime that is almost never prosecuted.
O'Keefe has been exposing this gap for a decade. Back in 2016, he walked into a Detroit polling location and was handed rapper Eminem's ballot — real name Marshall Bruce Mathers III — without showing identification. Nobody blinked.
Ten years later, the security upgrade appears to be: nothing.
Benson wants to be governor. She's running on a record that includes assuring Congress and voters that non-citizen voting isn't happening while non-citizens were, in fact, voting. The footage doesn't require interpretation. It doesn't need context. A man in a jail cell is on the active voter rolls of a state whose top election official says the problem doesn't exist.
When your election security relies entirely on criminals self-reporting their ineligibility, you don't have election security. You have a suggestion box.
