Trump claims voter fraud ahead of the midterms, but several illegal votes were cast for him

An undocumented Mexican immigrant who embraced Trumpism despite warnings of a mass deportation drive, a Republican mayor from a small conservative town, and a man who cast a ballot using his wife’s voting papers while under suspicion in her disappearance and death. These are among the election fraud cases prosecuted in recent years involving Republican supporters who ultimately faced legal consequences for illegally voting for Donald Trump, whether by casting multiple ballots or voting without being eligible to do so. The cases contrast sharply with the repeated claims by the president and his allies, who have alleged, without evidence, that various elections were manipulated to benefit Democratic candidates.

On Thursday evening, Trump once again advanced that argument in a prime-time address from the White House, claiming that the U.S. electoral system suffers from “shocking vulnerabilities.” The president announced the declassification of documents related to the 2020 election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden, and alleged Chinese interference, though he provided no evidence that votes had been altered or election outcomes affected. He also urged Congress to pass stalled legislation that would require voters to present identification when registering and proof of U.S. citizenship. He did so while repeating another longstanding claim, one that studies have shown to involve exceedingly rare occurrences: that large numbers of non-citizens voted in previous elections.

In fact, several election fraud cases prosecuted in federal and state courts since 2017 point in the opposite direction. At least among the cases in which authorities disclosed how defendants voted, EL PAÍS found no instance of a ballot being cast illegally for Biden, Kamala Harris or Hillary Clinton, Trump’s main Democratic rivals. This is even though Trump has claimed for years that Democrats were benefiting from fraud. “They cheat. That’s all they want to do is cheat,” Trump said at a campaign event in North Carolina in September 2024. By contrast, the documented cases of improper voting benefited him and other Republicans.

Under the current administration, the Department of Justice has sought access to election materials and voter rolls in California, Georgia, Arizona and Michigan. Its prosecutors, however, have not publicly identified a single illegally cast ballot in favour of a Democrat in those states. Trump and his allies have repeatedly argued that voting by non-citizens, including undocumented immigrants, poses a threat to U.S. democracy. Their allegations have even extended to cemeteries, with claims that some people use the identities of deceased individuals to vote. Both assertions have been widely described as conspiracy theories.

On June 7, days after California’s gubernatorial and congressional primaries, Los Angeles U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said his office was conducting “multiple election fraud investigations.” So far, however, no charges have been brought. Essayli has argued that California’s voter rolls contain the names of deceased individuals and people who no longer reside in the state. He has also claimed that existing verification procedures are not enough to prevent undocumented immigrants from taking part in elections. “Almost anybody can register to vote in the state of California,” Essayli said in an interview with a conservative podcast. State election officials have rejected those claims.

“The argument is that widespread election fraud is being committed by Democrats and immigrants, but most of the prosecuted cases involve Republicans, and some of them tried to vote twice for Trump,” says Raúl Hinojosa, a professor of Chicano studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). “That manipulation is deeply troubling, and I believe it is part of an effort by Trump to overturn election results that do not favor him.”

The mayor with a green card who voted

His name is José, although everyone in his town knows him as “Joe.” He was born in Mexico 55 years ago and arrived in the United States at age four. His family emigrated and settled in Coldwater, a southern Kansas town of barely 700 inhabitants. In 1990, he obtained a green card, a status that allowed him to work for a utilities company and, years later, to make his way in local politics. He rose to become the town’s top official. For that reason, no one questioned seeing him go to the polls in every election supporting Trump and other Republicans.

But Joe Ceballos says he did not know that, as a non-citizen, the law prohibited him from voting. That is what he told federal agents who arrested him last May and subsequently transferred him to the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation proceedings.

The Department of Homeland Security describes him as an “alien from Mexico” who falsely claimed U.S. citizenship when registering to vote in Kansas. The agency also alleges that he was convicted of aggravated assault in 1995 and that, in a 2025 naturalization application, he made a false statement by declaring under penalty of perjury that he had never claimed to be a U.S. citizen. Ceballos resigned as mayor of Coldwater in December and, in April, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour charge of illegal voting in a case brought by Kansas prosecutors. Meanwhile, ICE continues to pursue his removal to Mexico.

Even so, the former mayor insists that he does not regret voting for Trump.

The Ceballos case has become one of the examples the Trump administration cites in support of the SAVE America Act. The proposal would require anyone registering to vote in federal elections to provide documentary proof of citizenship, such as a passport. The House of Representatives passed the bill more than a year ago, but it has remained stalled in the Senate ever since.

The undocumented immigrant who backed Trump

In June 2017, Mexican national Gustavo Araujo Lerma received a letter from Trump’s presidential campaign thanking him for helping “make Americans safer, stronger and more prosperous than ever before.” The intended recipient, however, was Hiram Enrique Vélez, a Puerto Rican man who had died in 1997.

Araujo Lerma, who lived in Northern California, had assumed Vélez’s identity years earlier, in 1992, before the Puerto Rican’s death. According to prosecutors, he used that identity to participate in at least 20 elections, including five presidential contests. He voted for Trump in the 2016 election and for George W. Bush in 2004. Court documents citing voter-registration records identified him as a registered Republican. The mass deportation plans that Trump was already championing at the time appeared to trouble him little, even though they would eventually catch up with him as well.

Using the false identity, Araujo Lerma, 69, obtained a U.S. passport, which he used to travel repeatedly to his home state of Jalisco, Mexico. He also secured permanent residency for his wife, who later became a naturalized U.S. citizen. When the fraud was uncovered, she lost that immigration status.

Federal prosecutors in the Northern District of California charged him with aggravated identity theft, passport fraud and illegal voting by a non-citizen. Araujo Lerma pleaded not guilty and opted for a three-day trial.

To build their case, investigators traveled to Mexico, where they obtained copies of a marriage certificate issued in Guadalajara, along with other official documents and travel records. They also gathered records relating to the deceased Hiram Enrique Vélez. The evidence was presented to a jury, which found Araujo Lerma guilty on all three counts.

In late 2019, a judge sentenced him to nearly four years in prison. He completed his sentence in December 2020 and was subsequently deported.

‘All these other guys are cheating’

Suzanne Morphew disappeared in Colorado on Mother’s Day 2020. Shortly afterwards, her husband, Barry Morphew, posted a Facebook video that went viral, pleading for help in finding her. From the outset, however, he was the prime suspect in her disappearance. Investigators became even more suspicious when they discovered that, while the search for Suzanne was still underway, a mail-in ballot had been cast in her name for Trump.

During questioning, Barry Morphew admitted that he had submitted the ballot because he believed his wife would have voted for the Republican candidate and because he was convinced that “all these other guys are cheating.” The admission was included in the arrest affidavit issued against him in 2021.

Suzanne’s remains were later found in Saguache County, about 45 miles from the couple’s home. An autopsy concluded that she had died from an “undetermined” cause, but ruled her death a homicide. Investigators also found traces of a tranquilliser in her remains similar to one that had been prescribed to her husband.

Barry Morphew has been charged with first-degree murder. He was released on bond in January and has maintained his innocence ever since his wife’s disappearance. His trial is scheduled for 2027.

The Trump supporters who voted in their dead mothers’ names

In the summer of 2020, Bruce Bartman used his late mother’s driver’s licence details to register her to vote in Pennsylvania. He then requested a mail-in ballot in her name and returned it marked for Trump in that year’s presidential election. There was just one problem: his mother had died 12 years earlier. Bartman also tried to register his deceased mother-in-law and request a ballot using her Social Security number. That attempt went no further, however, after election officials detected irregularities in the application.

Before a judge, Bartman blamed his actions on the isolation of the pandemic. “I was isolated last year in lockdown,” he said, according to local media reports. “I listened to too much propaganda and made a stupid mistake.” He was sentenced to five years’ probation and barred from voting for four years.

A similar case occurred in Pennsylvania. Robert Richard Lynn, a Republican supporter, requested an absentee ballot in the name of his deceased mother for the 2020 presidential election. According to the criminal complaint, when asked to explain why she would be absent, he wrote: “Visiting great-grandchildren from October 24 to November 10.” Lynn intended to cast a second vote for Trump using the identity of his mother, Marie Pl Hannigan, who had died five years earlier. Election records showed that she had last voted in November 2014. In court, Lynn described his actions as “a lapse in judgment.”

Fearing election fraud and committing it

Several polls predicted Democrat Hillary Clinton would win the November 2016 presidential election. Terri Lynn Rote, an Iowa woman who fervently supported Trump, decided to vote twice because she was convinced her first ballot would be canceled or even altered to favor a candidate she opposed.

When she was arrested and questioned by police, she explained she had acted that way because she believed Trump’s claims that the election was rigged and feared her original vote would somehow be changed to support Clinton. Rote was arrested after going to a Polk County satellite voting office in Des Moines. She was caught after casting a second ballot at a satellite voting centre in Polk County, Iowa. The scheme earned her a sentence of two years’ probation. It was also unnecessary: Trump went on to win comfortably.

Matthew Laiss, who moved from Pennsylvania to Florida, also voted twice for Trump in 2020. He first cast a mail-in ballot linked to his former address in Pennsylvania and then voted in person in Florida. A jury convicted him of election fraud in March, and last Wednesday a federal judge sentenced him to three years’ probation, including the first six months under home confinement, and ordered him to pay a $6,000 fine.

His lawyers argued that the charges should be dismissed because Laiss was protected by pardons issued by the president in connection with the 2020 election. The court rejected that argument.

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