Mexican Man Elected Mayor Of US Town Accused Of Unlawfully Voting Multiple Times

Local prosecutors charged a Mexican man currently serving as mayor of a small American city with unlawfully voting multiple times in U.S. elections.

Republican Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach on Wednesday charged Jose Ceballos, a Mexican national and mayor of Coldwater, Kansas, with three counts of voting without being qualified and three counts of election perjury, according to a press release from his office. The announcement marks the latest instance in which state officials allegedly caught a foreign national of voting, thanks in part to a database system bolstered by the Trump administration.

“In Kansas, it is against the law to vote if you are not a U.S. citizen,” Kobach said. “We allege that Mr. Ceballos did it multiple times.”

“Voting by noncitizens, including both legal and illegal aliens, is a very real problem,” the Kansas Attorney General continued. “It happens. Every time a noncitizen votes, it effectively cancels out a U.S. citizen’s vote.”

The charges were announced just one day after Ceballos was re-elected as mayor of Coldwater, Kansas, a city of a few hundred people in Comanche County.

While Ceballos is a legal permanent resident, he had not obtained American citizenship before allegedly registering to vote, according to prosecutors. The charges are nonperson felonies, and the Mexican national could face over five years in prison if convicted.

Kansas officials credited the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, an online service program administered by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), for helping to prevent foreign nationals from participating in elections.

“We now have tools, thanks to the current White House, that we haven’t had in over 10 years,”  Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab stated, according to