Shooter Arcan Cetin Illegally Voted 3 Times-Mostly Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
Arcan Cetin, the man accused of a mass shooting at Cascade Mall in Washington State on September 23rd, is a registered voter who participated in three elections even though he isn’t a naturalized citizen.
The Truth:
It’s true that Arcan Cetin has voted in three state elections since 2014 — but he is a naturalized U.S. citizen who had the right to do so.
Cetin, a Turkish native, was charged with five counts of murder in connection to a mass shooting at Cascade Mall in Burlington, Washington, on September 23rd.
Almost immediately, speculation began to stir about Cetin’s political affiliations, citizenship and voting record.
In the days that followed the shooting, state and federal authorities described Cetin as a “permanent U.S. resident” — not a naturalized U.S. citizen with voting rights. The National Review seized on those early reports to argue that non-citizens frequently vote for Democratic candidates:
Arcan Cetin faces five counts of murder after his shooting rampage at a Seattle-area mall last week. But he also turns out to be a non-citizen who has voted three times in state elections since 2014. Liberals claim non-citizen voting fraud is extremely rare, but Cetin’s case should cast light on both just how easy it is to commit and the efforts of federal and state officials to block efforts to uncover it. Cetin, who is from Turkey, is a legal resident of the United States but not a citizen. In 2014, he registered to vote and voted three times, most recently in May’s presidential primary.
Washington State, like all but a handful of states, doesn’t require any proof of citizenship. “Our hands are kind of tied,” Secretary of State Kim Wyman told a Seattle TV station, noting that the state doesn’t allow verification of a person’s citizenship for voting purposes. “But make no mistake,” she adds. “We want to make sure that everybody has confidence that people casting ballots are eligible. This is certainly going to be a topic at the next legislative session.” Local registrars can currently use a database to check the age and residence of people who register to vote, but a person’s claim to be a citizen is based on the honor system.
However, NBC Washington affiliate KING 5-TV, the outlet that first reported that Cetin had voted illegally, updated its initial report with a correction that stated Cetin was indeed a naturalized citizen who legally voted:
UPDATE: KING 5 learned Thursday that Arcan Cetin, the 20-year-old who killed five people at Cascade Mall on Sept. 23, is in fact a U.S. citizen.
For days after the shooting, Cetin was described by local and federal law enforcement as being a permanent U.S. resident. He immigrated to the U.S. from Turkey when he was a child, after his mother married an American citizen.
On Thursday, a federal official told KING that further investigation revealed that Cetin is a naturalized U.S. citizen. That means he was legally registered to vote.
And, while it’s clear that Cetin praised an ISIS leader in a blog post, but his political affiliations aren’t clear at this point. Some have pointed to a 2015 tweet as proof that Cetin supports Hillary Clinton:
However, Cetin appears to have been referring to the NFL Conference Championship game between the Green Bay Packers and Seattle Seahawks that was held on the same day, January 18, 2015, that Cetin tweeted. In saying that if “we win” he would vote for Hillary Clinton, Cetin appears to imply that he wouldn’t vote for Clinton under normal circumstances.
So, it’s true the Cetin voted in three state elections in Washington since 2014, but he was a naturalized U.S. citizen who was legally allowed to do so. And claims that Cetin supports Hillary Clinton don’t check out since his tweet from January 2015 seems to state the opposite.