Kansas leaders charged Joe Ceballos, the mayor of a small city in rural Kansas, with a crime on Wednesday. They say he voted in several elections even though he is not a U.S. citizen.
Scott Schwab, the Secretary of State for Kansas, and Kris Kobach, the Attorney General for Kansas, both Republicans who were elected, said they had filed six charges against Ceballos, a legal permanent resident from Mexico, for voting in elections in 2022, 2023, and 2024.
Ceballos used to be a city councilman and is now the mayor of Coldwater, Fox News noted.
States are obligated by law to have ways to regularly clean up their voter registration lists, which are also called voter rolls. Kobach, a longstanding immigration hawk and ally of President Donald Trump, said that the procedure includes using outside databases to look for noncitizens, but that it is not foolproof.
“Noncitizen voting is a real problem. It is not something that happens once in a decade. It is something that happens fairly frequently,” Kobach said, echoing the broader sentiments of Republicans who say voter fraud is a pressing issue.
According to the lawsuit that Fox News Digital looked at, Ceballos’ allegations, which include lying under oath and voting when he wasn’t qualified, could get him more than five years in prison.
Kobach, who used to be the Secretary of State for Kansas, has a lengthy history of calling for stricter voter ID legislation and tougher immigration enforcement.
