Washington, D.C. (December 8, 2025) –
A new Center for Immigration Studies report warns that the recent felony election fraud charges filed against Coldwater, Kan., mayor Jose “Joe” Ceballos-Armendariz expose dangerous flaws in the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), better known as the Motor-Voter law. The report concludes that Congress created a system that encourages non-citizens to register and vote, creating risks both to election integrity and to the legal permanent residents who mistakenly believe they are eligible to vote.
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach charged Ceballos-Armendariz, a lawful permanent resident and Mexican national, with voting illegally in three elections since 2022. His attorney has argued that Ceballos-Armendariz believed he was permitted to vote, saying, "the technicality of citizenship perhaps has escaped him." But the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed, only citizens may participate in America’s democratic decision-making. AG Kobach explained the importance of the rulings, "Every time a noncitizen votes, it effectively cancels out a U.S. citizen's vote."
The new report finds that the NVRA’s requirements, particularly its prohibition on state officials giving any guidance that might “discourage” anyone – even non-citizens – from registering, combined with the absence of any citizenship-verification mechanism, has created confusion for immigrants legally present in the United States. Numerous federal prosecutions in recent years involve permanent residents who mistakenly believed they were eligible to vote after being offered registration at DMVs or public-assistance agencies.
George Fishman, a senior legal fellow at the Center and author of the report, stated that “the Motor-Voter law was sold to Congress as risk-free. Its supporters insisted it would
not cause non-citizen registration. Yet the evidence, including the Kansas case, shows otherwise.”
The report calls on Congress to amend the NVRA to allow states to verify citizenship and permit officials to clearly warn non-citizens that they are ineligible to vote before they inadvertently break the law.
