A 39-year-old man in Minnesota now faces felony charges for registering to vote and casting a ballot in the 2024 election, despite not being a United States citizen. Mukeshkumar Somabhai Chaudhari was charged on Monday with perjury and a voting violation after authorities said records showed he submitted a ballot following a 2023 voter registration, Fox News Digital reported.
When investigators first interviewed Chaudhari, he denied voting. He then reversed course, admitted he had voted, and told authorities he is not a U.S. citizen. His explanation: he "made a mistake."
The case lands in the middle of a national debate over election integrity and noncitizen voting, and it puts a fresh spotlight on Minnesota's voter-registration system under Gov. Tim Walz. Fox News Digital said it reached out to Walz's office but did not report receiving a response.
Investigators believe Chaudhari received a voter registration notice from the state of Minnesota after obtaining his driver's license. That notice, authorities said, likely triggered the chain of events that put a noncitizen on the voter rolls in 2023 and allowed him to cast a ballot the following year.
Chaudhari told authorities he did not learn he should not have voted until his lawyer informed him during his green card process. In other words, no safeguard in the system caught the problem before or during the election. The man's own immigration attorney flagged it after the fact.
That sequence raises an uncomfortable question for Minnesota officials: if a noncitizen can receive a voter registration notice, register, attest to eligibility, swear to eligibility again before casting a ballot, and still vote without being stopped, how effective are the state's existing checks?
The Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State told Fox News Digital that ineligible voting is "extremely rare" and insisted the system works. A spokesperson laid out the process in detail:
"Only U.S. Citizens are eligible to vote in Minnesota. When an individual completes a voter registration application, they attest that they meet all eligibility requirements, including that they are a U.S. citizen. Before casting a ballot, one must again swear to their eligibility before they are allowed to vote. If a noncitizen attempts to vote in an election, they will be caught and held to account."
The office added that penalties for voting while ineligible may include deportation, a permanent bar on future citizenship, a fine of up to $10,000, and up to five years in prison. Those are serious consequences, but they apply only after the fact. In Chaudhari's case, the ballot had already been submitted and counted before anyone noticed.
The Secretary of State's assurance that noncitizens "will be caught" rings hollow when the catching happened not through any state verification process but through the defendant's own immigration lawyer. That is not a safeguard. That is luck.
This is not the first time Minnesota's voter rolls have drawn scrutiny. In 2024, the Republican National Committee challenged more than 100,000 voter records in the state. Minnesota officials subsequently deactivated roughly 1,000 voter registrations after reviewing 103,986 records. Public Safety Commissioner Bob Jacobson said the suspended registrations reflected unresolved irregularities involving voter information, "including address, name and citizenship."
The RNC said its challenge was prompted after Minnesota mailed a primary ballot earlier in 2024 to a noncitizen. That discovery led the RNC and Minnesota GOP to demand a broader review of the state's voter rolls, alleging in a letter to Secretary of State Steve Simon that "the system to ensure non-citizens do not vote in election[s] in Minnesota may be seriously flawed or that the staff charged with ensuring that only eligible voters are registered to vote were negligent in their duties."
RNC Chairman Michael Whatley was blunt: "Without the efforts of the RNC and MNGOP, Walz would have quietly allowed noncitizens to remain on the voter rolls and cast ballots this election."
Republicans have tied these concerns directly to policy choices made under Walz's administration. The state's "Drivers Licenses For All" law, which extended licenses to noncitizens, is at the center of the debate. Critics argue the law strains citizenship verification and creates exactly the kind of pipeline that led to Chaudhari's registration.
State Rep. Pam Altendorf, a Republican, posted on X after the charges were announced. She called out Minnesota Democrats for three specific actions she said weakened election safeguards: loosening election laws in 2023 and 2024, issuing driver's licenses to noncitizens, and creating a 46-day voting season during which the state mass-mailed voter registration cards and absentee ballots.
That last detail matters. A 46-day window with mass-mailed registration materials and absentee ballots means the state is actively pushing paperwork into mailboxes, including, apparently, the mailboxes of people who are not eligible to vote. The system does not just passively allow errors. It generates them.
Walz, who is no stranger to political controversy, faces mounting questions about his administration's handling of both election integrity and law enforcement. The Justice Department has separately investigated Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey over claims of obstructing immigration agents.
Bill Glahn, a policy fellow at the Center of the American Experiment, responded to the Chaudhari charges with a pointed post on X: "That thing that never ever happens happened again." Glahn has previously raised concerns about Minnesota's vouching system, in which a registered voter can "vouch" for up to eight other voters' residency when those voters want to sign up for same-day registration without an ID.
Think about that for a moment. Minnesota allows same-day voter registration without an ID, backed only by the word of another registered voter, and one person can vouch for up to eight others. Combined with a system that sends registration notices to noncitizens who obtain driver's licenses, the architecture practically invites the kind of violation Chaudhari now faces.
Chaudhari's case arrives as Republicans continue to push voter ID legislation known as the SAVE America Act at the federal level. The bill would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. Supporters rallied for the measure at Upper Senate Park in Washington, D.C., and the case out of Minnesota is likely to become Exhibit A for proponents who argue that current state-level systems are insufficient.
Democrats have long dismissed concerns about noncitizen voting as overblown, arguing that it is vanishingly rare and that voter ID laws suppress legitimate participation. Minnesota's Secretary of State echoed that framing by calling ineligible voting "extremely rare." But "extremely rare" is not the same as "impossible," and it is not the same as "our systems prevent it." The Chaudhari case shows that Minnesota's systems did not prevent it. They did not even detect it.
Walz himself has drawn sustained criticism beyond election policy. His inflammatory rhetoric comparing ICE to the Gestapo has alienated voters who believe in secure borders and lawful immigration enforcement.
Townhall columnist Dustin Grage summed up the frustration shared by many Minnesota conservatives in his own post on X: "Welcome to Tim Walz's Minnesota."
Meanwhile, Walz's tenure continues to generate headlines that suggest a pattern of oversight failures. A convicted Minnesota fraudster has claimed that both Attorney General Keith Ellison and Walz knew about fraud occurring under their watch, an allegation that, whatever its ultimate resolution, adds to the impression of an administration that is either unaware of or indifferent to systemic breakdowns.
Several questions remain open. Which Minnesota court filed the charges against Chaudhari? What specific jurisdiction did he register and vote in? Was he arrested, summoned, or released? Is there a public charging document? And perhaps most importantly: did Walz's office ever respond to Fox News Digital's inquiry?
The Secretary of State's office insists the system works because Chaudhari was eventually caught. But he was caught only after he voted, only after his immigration lawyer told him he had broken the law, and only after investigators confronted him. Every checkpoint the state claims to have in place, the registration attestation, the pre-ballot oath, failed to stop a noncitizen from casting a ballot in a presidential election.
Walz's administration has faced a growing firestorm on multiple fronts, and the Chaudhari case will only intensify pressure on the governor to explain how his state's election machinery allowed this to happen.
When the only thing standing between an illegal vote and a clean election is the defendant's own immigration lawyer, the system isn't working. It's just getting lucky, and luck is not a safeguard.
