JAMES TARANTO: The Accidental Alien: A noncitizen voted in multiple elections, the New York Times reports.

Hernandez’s case “represents a broken immigration system,” his lawyer, Elizabeth Ricci, tells the Times. No doubt about that. But it represents something else, too: a broken voting system. According to the Times, Hernandez cast improper votes in “every major election” since 1976. That’s at least 10 of them, twice as many if it includes midterms.

Noncitizens, including legal resident aliens, are forbidden to vote in every state. States that have sought to incorporate verification of citizenship into the voter-registration process have encountered obstacles from the Obama administration and denunciations from the New York Times.

That’s because most non-citizens vote Democratic. If they tended to vote Republican, the Justice Department would mandate three forms of citizenship verification, and a DNA sample, in the name of voting rights.