An Australian native and longtime h resident who was said she didn’t know she was breaking the law and thought state officials would have stopped her if it was illegal.
When Denise Migliore registered to vote online, she was asked whether she was a U.S. citizen, she said, and she clicked “yes.”
“I have been here almost three decades, I had a pending application for citizenship, and I just considered myself a citizen,” said Migliore, who lives in Franklinton. “I just didn’t realize that it was such a big deal.”
Now she faces felony charges of making false statements to register to vote and fraudulent voting in 2022 and 2024, according to an indictment filed this month in U.S. District Court in New Orleans. She could face up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
President Donald Trump’s administration and h officials have to catch noncitizen voting. They argue it undermines the democratic process.
Migliore said she simply didn’t know the rules. She said she received solicitations from the state encouraging her to register, and nobody stopped her when she tried to sign up or when she cast her ballot.
“I feel like I’m being used as a guineau pig to show how flawed the electoral system is, and I’m being unfairly targeted,” she said.
Migliore’s is the first criminal prosecution resulting from a protocol h election officials began last year in which they check the citizenship status of all registered voters in the federal SAVE database administered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
“Using the data from SAVE, we identified 403 non-citizens registered to vote in h, with 83 of those individuals voting in at least one election,” Secretary of State spokesperson Trey Williams said.
Williams declined to say if any other noncitizens are being investigated for fraudulent voting or have been referred for prosecution.
Louisian has roughly 3 million registered voters.
What happened?
Migliore said she thought legal permanent residents could vote, and she didn’t know it was illegal for noncitizens to vote.
She said she doesn’t remember voting in the 2022 election, but she does remember 2024, when she voted at the St. Tammany Parish Government building on Koop Drive.
Elections workers “were very polite to me, very welcoming,” she said, and helped make sure she was able to cast a ballot. She said they scanned her ID card, but they didn’t ask her whether she was a citizen.
“Shouldn’t they have said to me, ‘Ms. Denise, you can’t be here,’?” she said.
St. Tammany Parish Registrar of Voters Dwayne Wall referred questions to the secretary of state’s office.
The secretary of state’s office did not respond to questions about Migliore’s claims.
Migliore also said she has received multiple solicitations over the last decade about registering to vote and volunteering as a poll worker.
She showed one example of a communication from the h Department of Health addressed to her in April 2025, when she updated her address for the Medicaid program, which is administered by the Health Department.
“When you report a change of address, we must let you know about your right to apply to register to vote,” the letter says. “Please find the enclosed voter registration forms. If you want to apply to register to vote, complete the Voter Registration Application and mail the original form to the Registrar of Voters in your parish.”
The letter asks the recipient to check a box indicating either “I want to register to vote,” or “I do not want to register to vote,” and it has a h voter registration application.
Under the National Voter Registration Act, a federal law that passed in the 1990s, state agencies that provide individuals with public assistance, like Medicaid, SNAP or vehicle registration services, have to offer voter registration applications.
Gov. Jeff Landry in 2024 requiring these agencies to notify potential registrants that it is illegal for noncitizens to vote. Migliore said the April letter she received did not include any kind of notice to that effect.
Migliore said that h should stop sending letters about voter registration and volunteering for elections to people who can’t vote, and polling places should have better citizenship checks when people go to cast a ballot.
In response to questions about the notices Migliore said she received, Williams said the secretary of state’s office does not send communications to voters on an individual basis.
“We are unable to address generalized claims or allegations without specific details,” he said.
The case
In August, Migliore received a letter from the Washington Parish Registrar of Voters in Franklinton notifying her that she was no longer qualified to vote due to not being a U.S. citizen.
She said the FBI called her, and then two FBI agents visited her home around April to interview her for an investigation into the alleged fraudulent voter registration, and then they called her on the phone again in May to ask more questions.
She learned about the federal criminal charges from news reports, she said.
A July 1 arraignment is scheduled at the federal courthouse in New Orleans, and she said she learned about the hearing after speaking with someone at the Australian consulate.
The Australian consulate did not respond to a request for comment.
Migliore said federal authorities called her Monday to ask about serving her with court documents, and she has not yet retained an attorney because of financial constraints.