Iowa AG charges non-citizen for illegally voting in July city council election

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird (R) has charged a non-citizen with illegally voting in a July city council election.

The non-citizen, Jorge Oscar Sanchez-Vasquez, a 42-year-old from Marshalltown, was arrested Wednesday and charged two counts of election misconduct, according to the attorney general's office. He resides in the U.S. legally but is ineligible to vote.

Bird's office announced Friday that Sanchez-Vasquez faced charges for registering to vote and illegally doing so on July 16 in a Marshalltown City Council special election.

Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate (R) told Iowa Public Radio on Friday that he has not seen significant non-citizen voting in Iowa.

“The law says very clearly you have to be a U.S. citizen to vote,” Pate said. “We have voter ID, so we are establishing a baseline of, you have to prove who you are. We also are working with our partners. We work with the court system. There’s various partners who help us identify those folks who are here legally, but not U.S. citizens.”

“Our role is to make sure only eligible voters vote,” he said on Iowa PBS last week. “Even one, two, five, 100 — whatever the number might be — is not acceptable. So, we’ll keep trying to make sure we’re protecting and keeping that away. I don’t believe, in Iowa, we have any of those types of massive voter fraud.”