Mayor from Mexico charged with illegal voting in Kansas elections

Kansas leaders filed criminal charges Wednesday against Joe Ceballos, the mayor of a small town in rural Kansas, alleging he voted in multiple elections but is not a U.S. citizen.

Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab and Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, both elected Republicans, announced they had filed six charges in Comanche County against Ceballos, a lawful permanent resident from Mexico, for voting in the elections in 2022, 2023 and 2024.

Ceballos is the mayor of Coldwater and previously served as a city council member.

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States are required by law to have mechanisms in place to regularly clean voter registration rolls, also known as voter rolls. The process involves using third-party databases to screen noncitizens, which Kobach, a longtime immigration hawk and ally of President Donald Trump, said is not without errors.

“Non-citizen voting is a real problem. It’s not something that happens once a decade. It’s something that happens fairly frequently,” Kobach said, echoing the broader sentiment of Republicans who say voter fraud is a pressing issue.

Ceballos’ charges, which include perjury and voting without qualification, according to the complaint reviewed by Fox News Digital, carry a maximum penalty of more than five years in prison. Ceballos did not respond to a request for comment.

Kobach, who previously served as Kansas secretary of state, has a long history of pushing for tougher immigration enforcement and stricter voter ID laws. In 2018, he lost a high-profile federal lawsuit after trying to enforce a state law that requires voters to provide physical documentation of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote.

The court found that the order exceeded the requirements necessary to confirm citizenship, in violation of federal election laws.

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The voter inserts the voter’s absentee ballot into the drop box. (AP Photo/Paul Sagna, File)

The court said at the time that the state law “cannot be justified by the scant evidence of noncitizen voter fraud before and after the law was passed.”

Kobach did not explain how state officials knew the former mayor and city councilman was not a citizen, but he said investigators had “irrefutable evidence” against Ceballos.

Signature boxes are displayed after a conference hosted by Citizens for Voter ID at the Nebraska Capitol on July 7, 2022, in Lincoln, Nebraska. (Noah Reeve/Lincoln Journal Star via AP)

City officials, like mayors, are also required by law to be U.S. citizens, which the district attorney said is “noteworthy” but not a criminal offense, Kobach said. Ceballos was on the ballot for re-election on Election Day, but official results have not yet been certified.

“Our system right now is based largely on trust, trust that when a person signs the registration or signs the ballot books saying they are an eligible voter or they are an American citizen, that that person is telling the truth,” Kobach said. “In this case, we allege that Mr. Ceballos violated that trust,” he added.

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Kobach and Schwab said they recently began tapping into a federal government database that helps cross-check voter rolls with immigration records that they expect will lead them to identify more voting violations.

Ceballos’ first appearance in court will be on December 3.