The Coldwater Cold Case That Wasn’t Cold at All
In a plot twist straight out of one of those Midwestern crime shows where the population is 600 and the drama is 60,000, the tiny town of Coldwater, Kansas now finds itself at the center of a statewide election-integrity brawl — because its freshly re-elected mayor, José Ceballos, has been charged with six criminal counts for allegedly voting despite not being a U.S. citizen.
Some towns get harvest festivals.
Coldwater got a civics lesson delivered by the Kansas Attorney General’s Office.
The Short Version
Kansas AG Kris Kobach says Ceballos voted multiple times — in 2022, 2023, and 2024 — despite being a lawful permanent resident, not a citizen, which under Kansas law makes him ineligible to vote and ineligible to hold elected office.
In other words:
You can run the town… but first you have to be legally allowed to run the town.
A Mayor With a Voting Problem
According to charging documents cited by multiple Kansas outlets, Ceballos faces:
- 3 counts of voting without being qualified, and
- 3 counts of election perjury
For voters wondering if that’s unusual:
Yes.
It’s extremely unusual.
Kobach laid it out bluntly:
“In Kansas, it is against the law to vote if you are not a U.S. citizen. We allege that Mr. Ceballos did it multiple times.” – Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach (Sentinel)
Multiple outlets also report that state investigators believe Ceballos voted in elections while listed in federal records as a non-citizen, something the state tracks as part of routine voter-roll maintenance.
There are plot twists on Netflix less dramatic than this.
Re-Elected Tuesday, Charged Thursday
Adding to the spectacle:
Ceballos won re-election as Coldwater’s mayor on November 4, 2025.
By November 6, he wasn’t celebrating.
He was on the receiving end of six felony accusations.
Small towns move fast when your mayor allegedly isn’t supposed to be mayor.
The Town’s Response: “We’re Processing…”
Coldwater, population ~700, issued the kind of calm, carefully-lawyered statement small towns produce when their mayor has just been hit with a multi-count criminal complaint:
“We will allow the legal process to play out.”
Translation:
“We did not plan for this. Nobody plans for this.”
One reporter described the situation as a “shock to the community,” which is the polite way of saying:
People here are talking about literally nothing else.
The State’s Case: It’s About Citizenship, Not Immigration Status
Here’s the part that matters legally:
Ceballos is widely reported to be a lawful permanent resident — meaning he can live, work, own property, pay taxes, run a business, and raise a family in Kansas.
What he cannot do under Kansas law is:
- vote, or
- hold an elected office that requires voter qualification
And Kansas requires mayors in cities like Coldwater to be qualified electors.
Qualified elector = U.S. citizen.
If the state’s allegations are proven, the case isn’t about immigration policy — it’s about whether Kansas election law was violated six separate times.
This is why Kobach’s office moved fast.
The National Reaction: “How Does This Even Happen?”
Once the story hit the AP wire and then New York media, reactions ranged from disbelief to dark humor:
- “This is why voter rolls need auditing.”
- “Kansas just found its real-life Parks and Rec subplot.”
- “Imagine being mayor and not allowed to vote for yourself.”
To be clear: Ceballos has not been convicted of anything.
He is charged, which means the case will now go through the Kansas courts.
But the political optics?
They’re already radioactive.
The Broader Question
What many national outlets have latched onto isn’t Ceballos as an individual — it’s the structural question:
How did a non-citizen get registered to vote, cast votes for multiple years, qualify for the ballot, win an election, and run a municipality before the state intervened?
Not even Hollywood writes bureaucratic breakdowns that cleanly.
Kansas officials will now use this case as a legislative example — not because they found a conspiracy, but because they found a gap wide enough to fit an entire mayoralty through.
The Bottom Line
Mayor José Ceballos stands accused of:
- voting as a non-citizen, and
- serving as an elected official despite not being legally eligible to do so
If the charges hold, Coldwater’s mayoral race just became the case study in what happens when the paperwork doesn’t match the politics.
And if the charges don’t hold, the town still spent a week in the national news cycle experiencing what most Americans only witness from a distance:
the civic equivalent of a tornado warning — except this time it touched down directly in city hall.
Citations
- Sentinel Kansas – “Kansas mayor charged with voting as a non-citizen” (Nov 2025)
- Kansas City Star – “Coldwater mayor accused of voting as noncitizen; charged with election crimes” (Nov 2025)
- New York Post – “Kansas mayor hit with criminal charges for allegedly voting as noncitizen in several elections” (Nov 2025)
- Kansas Attorney General Statement via Sentinel (quoted)