The use of the word “willfully” in Section 20511(2) i n d i c a t e s t h a t federal prosecutors must be prepared to prove that the offender was aware that he or she was doing something unlawful. Section 20511(2) is also limited to conduct that occurs “in any election for Federal office.” While the phrasing of this jurisdictional element differs somewhat from the jurisdictional language used by Congress in earlier election fraud statutes, the Department believes that it was intended to achieve the same result. 30 (a) Fraudulent registration: § 20511(2)(A) Subsection 20511(2)(A) prohibits any person, in an election for federal office, from defrauding or attempting to defraud state residents of a fair and an impartially conducted election by procuring or submitting voter registration applications that the offender knows are materially false or defective under state law. The scope of the statute is broader than that of the “false information” provision of Section 10307(c), discussed above, which is limited to false information involving only name, address, or period of residence. The statute applies to any false information that is material to a registration decision by an election official. For this reason, the provision is likely to be the statute of preference for most false registration matters. As already discussed, because registration to vote is unitary in all states, in the sense that in registering to vote an individual becomes eligible to vote in all elections, federal as well as nonfederal, the jurisdictional element is automatically satisfied in schemes to submit fraudulent registration applications. 30 The earlier statutes, 52 U.S.C. §§ 10307(c) and (e), contain express references to each federal office (Member of the House, Member of the Senate, President, Vice President, presidential elector) and type of election (primary, general, special) providing federal jurisdiction. The revised language seems to have been intended as a less cumbersome rephrasing of the required federal nexus. 59

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