Ballots Printed For A Felon

Mail-in ballot application with I Voted By Mail sticker.

A Maryland case where an illegal immigrant stayed on the voter rolls for roughly nine months after being exposed shows just how slowly some blue-state officials move when it comes to protecting the ballot box.

Story Snapshot

An illegal immigrant, Ian Roberts, falsely claimed to be a U.S. citizen and got registered to vote in Maryland twice.
He stayed on the voter rolls for months after federal arrest and a guilty plea for citizenship fraud, even as ballots kept getting generated in his name.
Maryland officials first hid his citizenship answer on public records, then only released it after watchdogs threatened legal action.
Congressional Republicans are now pressing Maryland’s election chief for answers as Democrats and activists keep insisting noncitizen voting is a “myth.”

How An Illegal Immigrant Ended Up Registered To Vote — Twice

Ian Andre Roberts is a noncitizen from Guyana who worked his way into powerful jobs in American public schools, including running the largest school district in Iowa.^[8] Records show he was a registered voter in Maryland for more than a decade, even though he was in the country illegally and later faced a deportation order.^[8] According to documents obtained by election watchdogs, Roberts submitted Maryland voter registration forms at least twice and claimed he was a United States citizen under penalty of perjury.^[6]^[7]

Public Interest Legal Foundation and the Maryland Freedom Caucus say unredacted voter cards from Prince George’s County confirm Roberts checked the box saying he was a citizen, despite his noncitizen status.^[1]^[6] A federal congressional hearing on the National Voter Registration Act later cited Roberts as an illegal immigrant who “successfully registered to vote twice,” using his false citizenship claim to get added to the rolls.^[7] Under current law, that false claim is a felony, yet the state’s system accepted his word with no proof of citizenship required.^[19]

The Nine-Month Fight To Get One Name Off The Rolls

Roberts’ immigration status finally caught up with him when federal agents arrested him in Iowa under a long-standing deportation order.^[4]^[8] He later pleaded guilty to citizenship fraud, admitting he was not a U.S. citizen, a confession that should have made his ineligibility crystal clear.^[3] Yet months after his arrest and even several months after that guilty plea, local reports and watchdogs found his name still listed as an active Democratic voter on Maryland’s public voter rolls.^[4]^[9]

Washington Times reporting noted that Maryland “kept printing ballots” for Roberts well after it was publicly known he was an illegal immigrant who had moved a thousand miles away to Iowa.^[4] Delegate and caucus posts in Maryland described a timeline of roughly nine months from the initial discovery of his noncitizen status to his final removal, a delay Maryland officials have not fully explained with a detailed, date-by-date timeline.^[4]^[5] That sluggish response, even in a single case, shows how slow and cautious officials can be when faced with cleaning up their own registration mistakes.

Redacted Records, Evasive Answers, And Growing Congressional Pressure

When watchdog groups and journalists first asked for Roberts’ voter file, Prince George’s County released copies with key sections blacked out, including his answer to the basic question “Are you a U.S. citizen?”^[1]^[4]^[7] Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections warned the county that such redactions had no clear legal basis and threatened litigation to obtain the full record.^[3] Only then did the county back down and release an unredacted form that showed Roberts had indeed claimed to be a citizen.^[2]

🗳️ The Other Maryland Man finally removed from Maryland Voter Registration list.

9 months after it was discovered that a superintendent of a large school district was not only a noncitizen with a final deportation order, but also had been illicitly registered to vote in… pic.twitter.com/xqKTCskJQR

— Maryland Freedom Caucus (@MDFreedomCaucus) June 19, 2026

Maryland’s top election official, Jared DeMarinis, has repeatedly stressed that the state relies on what applicants say about themselves and generally only removes noncitizens if the voter self-reports or a jury commissioner flags them.^[7]^[16] In a letter to Congress, he argued that being on the voter rolls does not prove someone actually voted and refused to give clear yes-or-no answers on whether Roberts was ever sent an absentee ballot or when he was finally removed.^[5] That stance has only fueled more questions from House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil and Subcommittee on Elections Chair Laurel Lee, who formally demanded detailed answers from the Maryland Board of Elections about how an illegal immigrant stayed on the rolls so long.^[9]

Why This One Case Hits Nerves On Both Sides Of The Voter Fraud Debate

Election officials and left-leaning advocacy groups keep saying noncitizen voting is “extremely rare” and that fears of widespread illegal voting are a “myth.” Studies they cite find suspected noncitizen voting at about 0.0001 percent of millions of ballots cast, and a Heritage Foundation database lists only a few dozen proven cases over many years.^[20] These numbers are used to argue that strict proof-of-citizenship rules are not needed and would only make it harder for lawful citizens to vote.^[2]^[24]

Conservatives look at Roberts’ case and draw the opposite lesson. They see a noncitizen who twice signed under penalty of perjury, got on the rolls for years, moved states, faced a deportation order, was arrested by federal agents, pled guilty to citizenship fraud, and still was not promptly removed by the Maryland system that trusted his “honor” in the first place.^[3]^[4]^[7] For many Trump supporters, that is not a harmless paperwork glitch—it is a warning that a system built on self-attestation, slow removals, and political denial puts every lawful American vote at risk, even if only a handful of bad actors ever get caught.