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.
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“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.
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He lost a high-profile federal case in 2018 after trying to enforce a state rule that said voters had to provide proof of U.S. citizenship when they registered to vote.
A court said it went beyond what was needed to prove citizenship, which is against federal election laws.
The court concluded at the time that the state law could not “be justified by the scant evidence of noncitizen voter fraud before and after the law was passed.”
Kobach didn’t say how state officials found out that the mayor and former city councilman are supposedly not a citizens, but he did say that investigators have “unassailable evidence” against Ceballos.
Kobach argued that city officials, such as mayors, must also be U.S. citizens. The attorney general said this was “worth noting” but not a crime. On Election Day, Ceballos was on the ballot for re-election, but the official results have not yet been confirmed.
“In large part, our system right now is based on trust, trust that when the person signs the registration or signs the poll books saying that he is a qualified elector or that he is a United States citizen, that the person is telling the truth,” Kobach said. “In this case, we allege that Mr. Ceballos violated that trust.”
Kobach and Schwab claimed they have started using a federal government database that enables them to verify voter rolls against immigration information. They think this will help them find more voting irregularities.
Ceballos will be in court for the first time on December 3.
This comes amid the federal government shutdown, which is approaching almost 40 days.
The Democratic House and Senate leaders sent a letter to President Trump on Wednesday morning, a day after elections nationwide saw their party pick up gains in blue regions, demanding “bipartisan” talks to reopen the government.
The letter comes after most Senate Democrats have voted 14 times against a GOP-led spending bill to reopen the government.
Meanwhile, a new report suggests that key elements of a potential deal to end the federal government shutdown are beginning to take shape — though it remains uncertain when, or even if, all sides will reach an agreement.
According to Axios, the proposed “three-legged” plan includes three main components: a Senate vote on Affordable Care Act tax credits, a short-term continuing resolution to give negotiators more time to finalize a full-year budget for the fiscal year that began October 1, and a separate vote to fund military construction, the legislative branch, and agriculture programs.
Before Senate Democrats forced the government into a shutdown, the House had already passed a bill to keep it funded through November 21.
If the Senate now strikes a deal to reopen the government, the House will have to return to session and approve the measure, extending the funding deadline in the process.
