Steve Watkins, a Republican congressman in Kansas, was charged Tuesday with three felonies and a misdemeanor related to voting illegally in a 2019 local race. The charges were filed in a state where Republicans have for years made widespread vote claims of non-citizens, with little evidence.
Prosecutors did not provide details of the charges, but said they were related to a 2019 local election. The Topeka Capital-Journal previously reported that Watkins changed his voter registration address to a local UPS store in Topeka in August 2019. He made the change to hide that he was living with his parents at the time, according to the Kansas City Star. Watkins also allegedly lied to a detective about the matter in February, according to court documents obtained by the Star.
Watkins’ change of address was significant because it placed him in a different city council district than the one he actually lived in. The race for the city council district that Watkins voted for was decided by just 13 votes in November 2019, according to Capital-Journal.
Watkins, a first-term congressman representing eastern Kansas, was charged with voting without qualification, marking / transmitting more than one early ballot, and obstructing law enforcement. He was also charged with a misdemeanor offense for failing to notify the state of a change of address.
Watkins’ chief of staff told the Capital-Journal that the congressman made a mistake by registering at the UPS address. But Bryan Piligra, a spokesman for Watkins’ reelection campaign, also noted that the charges were announced just before Watkins participated in a primary debate.
“They couldn’t have been more political if they tried,” he said in a statement. “Like President Trump, Steve is being politically prosecuted by his opponents who cannot accept the results of the last election.”
According to the Kansas City Star, voting without qualification is punishable by 15 to 17 months in prison for a first-time offender. The other two crimes are punishable by seven to nine months in prison.
The charges come as Donald Trump and other Republicans have raised fears that the 2020 election will be tainted by significant electoral fraud, although several studies have shown that electoral fraud is extremely rare and isolated. The highest-profile electoral fraud case in recent years involved another Republican who ran for Congress in 2018 and hired an agent who illegally collected ballots by mail.
Prosecutors across the United States have used cases where people vote while ineligible, even by mistake, to give an example. In Texas, Crystal Mason, an African American woman, did not know that she was not eligible to vote, but she was sentenced to five years in prison for trying to vote in 2016 while on probation for a felony (an appeal is ongoing). In North Carolina, prosecutors have also filed criminal charges in recent years against people with felony convictions and non-citizens who voted.
In Kansas, former Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a Republican, built his national profile by suggesting that there were a significant number of noncitizens on the state’s voter lists. His main achievement was getting the legislature to pass a law that requires voters to provide documents that prove their citizenship when they register to vote. But a federal court reversed the law, saying it imposed an illegal burden on voters, noting that only 67 noncitizens had attempted to register or had registered for nearly two decades.
Bob Salera, a spokesman for the Republican Congress National Committee, the campaign arm of House Republicans, said the group was aware of the charges and was seeking more information.
Daniel Strauss contributed reporting
.
