Kansas to Prosecute ‘Very Significant Number’ of Noncitizen Voters, as National Voter ID Debate Intensifies

Kansas will be prosecuting more cases of noncitizen voting, the state’s Attorney General Kris Kobach says, as the national debate continues about requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration and identification to vote.

The state this year has prosecuted three noncitizens who cast ballots, one an incumbent mayor who was also not legally allowed to run for office.

“There’s three cases filed already. One has already been resolved,” Kobach, a Republican, told the Daily Signal. “There are two that are still in process, and we’ve got more in the hopper, and it’s not going to be just six. It’s going to be a very significant number.”

Any charges are notable since Democrats and groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union contend noncitizen voting is not a problem.

States can cross-check voter registration lists with a list of noncitizens now that the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security is sharing the SAVE program with states. SAVE, short for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, provides data on both legal noncitizens and people who are not in the country legally.

At least 25 states have used the SAVE system to cross-reference voter registration rolls, but few have brought prosecutions against ineligible voters. In January, the U.S. Justice Department charged four noncitizens with illegal voting.

Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab has used information from the SAVE program to identify individuals who voted in Kansas elections who are not U.S. citizens, and he then made referrals to the attorney general’s office.

“The way a case begins wasn’t possible under President [Joe] Biden,” Kobach said. “Now DHS is sharing data with us on known aliens residing in each state. … We can now compare that list of known aliens in Kansas to the list of Kansas voters.”

“We’re getting a very large set of names, and then we winnow down that set of names to ones we are certain that it is, indeed, a person illegally in the country, or legally for that matter,” Kobach said. “A person in the country legally, but who is not a U.S. citizen, and that person’s voting, it’s illegal and we will be prosecuting.”

Kobach is a former Kansas secretary of state, where he oversaw Kansas elections. In 2017, President Donald Trump appointed him to chair a bipartisan commission on election integrity.

Last week, Jose Ceballos-Armendariz, the former mayor of Coldwater, Kansas, turned himself in to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Wichita area, Fox 4 Kansas City reported. Ceballos-Armendariz is a Mexican national with a green card and resides legally in the United States. He was prosecuted by Kobach’s office and pleaded guilty last month to illegally voting in several elections.

He pleaded guilty to three counts of disorderly election conduct on April 20 and was sentenced to serve six months in jail, suspended to one year of probation, and a $2,000 fine, according to the Kansas attorney general’s office.

The state also charged Edwin Ramirez-Guerra with one count of voting without being qualified and one count of election perjury. The state charged Jose Luis Gomez Sr. with one count of voting without being qualified and two counts of election perjury. After the warrant was served, Gomez was deported following federal immigration proceedings.

“The number is going to be significant when all is said and done, and it hasn’t stopped. It still continues even though we have, in Kansas, a very pro-law enforcement attitude toward elections,” Kobach said.