The former Des Moines Public Schools superintendent facing deportation after being taken into custody on charges of being in the county illegally has turned out to be a poster child for cleaning up dirty state voter rolls.
The case of Ian Andre Roberts, a “criminal illegal alien from Guyana,” raises yet another red flag about noncitizens on voter lists nationwide — and reinforces the urgent need for citizen-only voter safeguards, an election watchdog tells The Federalist.
Revelations of Another ‘Maryland Man’
As columnist Dustin Grage first reported earlier this week, Roberts has been registered as a Democrat since 2012 in Maryland, where he appears to have worked in education from July 2001 to 2014, according to WHO 13 in Des Moines. While his LinkedIn page shows he took education administration positions over the past decade in Missouri, California, Pennsylvania and finally in Des Moines in 2023, Roberts remains on active voter status in Maryland, according to state officials. He is listed as a Democrat.
The Maryland Freedom Caucus confirmed Roberts’ active status on the state’s voter rolls Tuesday in a press release cleverly headlined, “Revelations of Another ‘Maryland Man’ Leave More Questions Than Answers.” Roberts’ status and the Maryland driver’s license issued to him would allow the foreign national to vote in Maryland elections — local, state and federal — even though he’s not a U.S. citizen and hasn’t resided in Maryland for years, the caucus said.
“Once again, our citizens’ votes are diluted and the democratic process is undermined as another illegal alien is found on Maryland’s voter rolls,” State Delegate and Freedom Caucus Chairman Matt Morgan said in the statement.
Maryland’s Democrat-led State Board of Elections has refused to turn over the state’s registration list to the Department of Justice as it investigate potential election-law violations. Maryland Elections Administrator Jared DeMarinis has stonewalled the DOJ, “citing, among other things, a concern that the list would be used to enforce immigration law,” according to the Freedom Caucus.
Late, Tuesday afternoon, the elections board sent out a press release about the registration process. DeMarinis told ABC 7 News in Washington, D.C., that no one by the name of Ian Andre Roberts has ever voted in Maryland. DeMarinis couldn’t verify whether Roberts is on the state’s voter rolls.
“Individuals who register via an automatic voter registration agency, for example, the Motor Vehicle Agency, are safeguarded against unintentional voter registration,” the State Board of Elections release states. So, if someone in the country illegally was “UNINTENTIONALLY registered to vote,” the individual didn’t break the law. No harm, no foul, in the eyes of the elections board.
‘This Isn’t About Politics’
In a post on his X account, Morgan said Maryland election officials have more explaining to do. He laid out a series of questions about the hold harmless provision.
– How many other people in Maryland have been mistakenly registered to vote?
– Why was Mr. Roberts automatically registered as a Democrat?
– Why would the MVA or any government office automatically register individuals without verifying their eligibility?
– Did Mr. Roberts ever receive a voter ID card?
– During the 2020 election, ballots were mailed to voters. Was a ballot sent to Mr. Roberts?
“This isn’t about politics; it violates our fundamental right to fair and secure elections,” Morgan said.
The vast majority of U.S. voters agree. Election integrity advocates say it’s long past time states are made to clean up dirty voter rolls, as the law requires. They say Congress needs to finally pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act. The SAVE Act, which would require individuals to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections, has narrowly passed in the Republican-controlled House but Democrats have stalled it in the bill-killing Senate.
“The Roberts case proves what our research has shown for years: noncitizens are getting onto voter rolls, and sometimes voting,” J. Christian Adams, president and general counsel of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, told The Federalist on Tuesday. “Maryland officials should be using the SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) database.” SAVE is an online service used by government agencies to verify the immigration status of individuals applying for benefits or licenses. It’s administered by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Adams’ organization has uncovered widespread inaccuracies on voter rolls across the country. In California, the foundation tracked “nearly 95,000 deceased registrants, tens of thousands of duplicates across state lines, and thousands of records with placeholder or fictitious birthdates.”
In 2018, PILF alerted Texas and federal law enforcement that mailers sent by the Texas Democratic Party in the Rio Grande Valley were encouraging noncitizens to register to vote. The mailers included voter registration forms with the citizenship and age-eligibility boxes pre-marked “Yes,” which could mislead lawful noncitizens into believing they were eligible.
Democrats continue to insist that few noncitizens show up on voting rolls, and significantly fewer vote in elections. But several states in recent years have reported thousands of possible foreign nationals popping up in their databases upon closer inspection.
Iowa, too, has found noncitizens on its voter rolls. Days before last November’s election, Secretary of State Paul Pate announced that his office “had identified 87 individuals who self-reported they are noncitizens after already casting ballots in elections,” The Federalist’s Shawn Fleetwood reported. Another 67 self-reported foreign nationals had registered to vote, although they did not do so in elections.
Roberts does not appear to be on Iowa’s voter rolls, according to Ashley Hunt Esquivel, communications director for Pate’s office.
“Our preliminary review does not show him as voting or being a registered voter in Iowa,” she told The Federalist in an email.
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
