- A Hancock County jury acquitted a man charged with illegally voting in a 2022 election.
- The verdict is the first acquittal in a series of noncitizen voting prosecutions by Iowa’s attorney general.
- Another man was convicted in a separate noncitizen voting case and is awaiting sentencing.
A Hancock County jury has acquitted a man charged with illegally voting in a 2022 election, marking the first of Attorney General Brenna Bird’s noncitizen voting prosecutions to end in a not guilty verdict.
Jurors found Roque Ramirez Vasquez not guilty of first-degree election misconduct on Wednesday, Sept. 10. The verdict cleared the 75-year-old Britt resident of allegations that he cast a ballot in the June 2022 primary despite being a lawful permanent resident, not a U.S. citizen.
Court filings show Vasquez had been registered to vote since 1999 and admitted to investigators he voted in the 2022 election. He pleaded not guilty in June and went to trial this month in Garner.
Iowa law bars noncitizens from registering to vote and voting. First-degree election misconduct is a class D felony punishable by up to five years in prison and fines from $1,000 to $10,245. Simply registering to vote without being eligible can trigger the charge, and casting a ballot carries the same penalty.
It is not clear why Vasquez was acquited and neither he nor his attorney could be reached for comment.
Instructions given to the jury said to find the defendant guilty they must believe the state proved without a reasonable doubt he knew he was not qualified to vote. The instructions also said the state must have proved the defendant was not a U.S. citizen.
Bird declined to speculate on why Vasquez was acquited.
“Iowans deserve safe and secure elections. They need to know their vote will not be canceled out by the illegal vote of someone prohibited from voting,” she said in a statement. “We respect the jury’s decision in this matter and remain committed to election integrity and prosecuting those who break the law by voting illegally.”
While Vasquez walked free, another man is awaiting sentencing after being convicted in a separate noncitizen voting case. In Palo Alto County, a jury Aug. 6 found Irving Omar Ahumada Geronimo guilty of registration fraud and vote fraud. His sentencing is Sept. 22 in Emmetsburg.
His case marks the first successful conviction under Bird’s push to prosecute noncitizens for election misconduct.
Bird’s office has filed six such cases since she took office.
Ahumada Geronimo’s case and that of Jorge Oscar Sanchez-Vasquez, 42, of Marshalltown, who was arrested in Marshall County on two counts of election misconduct, were announced last year.
Four others followed this spring, including Vasquez’s case.
In Johnson County, Emmanuel Gathua of Iowa City was charged in March with illegally voting in the November 2023 election, and Itzel Romero Lopez was accused of registering and voting in March 2022. In Sioux County, Jose Lozano Munoz was charged with illegally voting in elections in March 2022, March 2023 and November 2023.
It is illegal and rare for noncitizens to vote in federal elections for president or top-ticket congressional races.
The prosecutions come in the wake of a Republican-led crackdown on noncitizen voting and allegations that Democrats were trying to steal elections with noncitizen voting. However, there has been no evidence of a widespread effort to register noncitizens to vote across the U.S.
The charges come amid allegations by Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, the state’s chief election officer, about illegal voting in the 2024 election. Following an audit of voter registration polls referenced against other state and federal citizenship records, Pate alleged in March that 35 noncitizens voted last year in Iowa and another five had their ballots rejected. He also reported 277 noncitizens had been identified on the state’s voter rolls, although the vast majority did not register or attempt to vote in 2024.
That’s a much smaller list than the 2,176 suspected noncitizens Pate told county voting officials in Iowa to challenge in advance of November’s election.
That larger list was drawn from decades of voter registration data cross-referenced with Iowa Department of Transportation records. Pate had sought access to the federal SAVE database, which tracks noncitizen status, but was denied by the Biden administration. The Trump administration granted access in March, allowing Pate’s office to narrow the list to 277.
The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation reviewed those cases and referred six to Bird’s office, leading to the charges.
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