Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach speaks at a press conference on Nov. 5, 2025, where he announced that his office was filing charges against the newly re-elected mayor of Coldwater, Kansas, for allegedly voting as a noncitizen.
Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab speaks at a press conference in Topeka on Nov. 5, 2025, at which state attorney general Kris Kobach announced that his office was bringing charges against Jose "Joe" Ceballos, the newly reelected mayor of Coldwater, Kansas, for allegedly voting as a noncitizen.

The Kansas Attorney General’s office has filed criminal charges against a well-liked, newly re-elected small-town mayor who is alleged to have voted despite not having U.S. citizenship.

Attorney General Kris Kobach said Jose “Joe” Ceballos, 54, is a Mexican citizen with legal permanent residency in the United States but is not a citizen. Ceballos was re-elected as mayor this week by residents of Coldwater, a community of 687 people in southwestern Kansas.

Ceballos is being charged with three counts apiece of election perjury and voting without being qualified, Kobach said Wednesday at a press conference. The charges carry a maximum penalty of 68 months’ imprisonment and $200,000 in fines.

A hearing on the charges is set for Dec. 3.

Skip Herd, Coldwater city attorney, told Wichita's KWCH-TV that Ceballos, who he said holds a green card, drew "red flags" by applying for permanent citizenship.

“He’s been a registered voter since 1990," Herd told the news station. "He applied for citizenship in February of this year, and through that, raised the issue of whether he was a legal citizen,” Herd said.

The state's charges are based on Ceballos’ votes in the general elections of 2022 and 2023 as well as the 2024 primary election, but Kobach said Ceballos was a registered voter prior to those elections. Ceballos did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Coldwater City Council president Britt Lenertz issued a statement saying the mayor had convened council members for a special meeting on Wednesday to discuss the situation.

“At this time, our focus remains on ensuring that city operations continue to run smoothly and that the needs of our community are met,” Lenertz said. “While the recent allegations involving the mayor are understandably concerning, we will allow the proper legal process to take its course before making any further comments.”

Lenertz told KWCH that Ceballos, who has also served as a city council member, has been informed he can complete the remaining two months of his ongoing mayoral term but that she will subsequently take over as mayor unless his citizenship is approved before then. The situation, she said, has been difficult for a community that has rallied around the longtime public official.

“As a mayor, he’s done a wonderful job,” she told the news outlet. “As a city councilmember, he’s done a wonderful job. He’s always put our community first in everything he does.”

Kobach said Kansas law requires city officers to be qualified electors, who in turn are required to be U.S. citizens.

“Noncitizen voting is a real problem,” Kobach said. “It’s not something that happens once in a decade.” Kansas is among several states, he said, now utilizing the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system, or SAVE, to verify citizenship status among their registered voter rolls. Tennessee, Florida and Ohio are also using the system, he said.

“The only way you can discover that a noncitizen is on the voter rolls is if some sort of external information comes to light which indicates that person is not a U.S. citizen,” he said. “In large part, our system right now is based on trust – trust that when the person signs the registration saying he’s a qualified elector or U.S. citizen, that the person is telling the truth. In this case we allege that Mr. Ceballos violated that trust.”

Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab said the system now allows state officials to determine if registered voters, whether intentionally or by clerical error, are on the rolls.

“If they voted, then it’s a crime,” he said. “It’s important that we clean this up.”

Schwab said the effort is less about looking for criminal behavior than restoring voter trust.

“It’s about showing the people of Kansas that we are doing what we can to make sure you know our voter rolls are as clean as we can,” he said. “It’s not a witch hunt.”

He said it will be up to Coldwater city officials to determine whether or not Ceballos should be seated as mayor, “but the law says he should not be, because he’s not a lawful elector.”

President Donald Trump recently commended Schwab, a Republican campaigning for the state governor’s seat in 2026, for using the SAVE system to “protect the integrity of our elections.”

Kobach said he anticipates that the SAVE system will help the state expose “hundreds” of noncitizen voters. Every noncitizen vote, he said, effectively cancels out the vote of a U.S. citizen.

“We don’t know how large a number it’s going to be, but early indications are that it’s a very large number,” he said. “We will have to see and decide which to prosecute.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Kansas AG files charges against newly reelected mayor for voting as non-US citizen

Reporting by Marc Ramirez, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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