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Kansas leaders brought criminal charges Wednesday against Joe Ceballos, the mayor of a small city in rural Kansas, alleging he voted in several 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 filed six charges in Comanche County against Ceballos, a lawful permanent resident from Mexico, for voting in elections in 2022, 2023 and 2024.
Ceballos is the mayor of Coldwater and previously served as a city councilman.
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States are required by law to have mechanisms in place to regularly clean voter registration lists, also known as voter rolls. The process includes using external databases to screen for noncitizens, which Kobach, a longtime immigration hawk and ally of President Donald Trump, said is not error-proof.
“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.
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach speaks at a rally with President Donald Trump at the Kansas Expocenter Oct. 6, 2018, in Topeka, Kan. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Ceballos’ charges, which include perjury and voting without being qualified, 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 attempting to enforce a state law that required voters to provide physical documentation of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote.
A court found it exceeded the necessary…
