Illegal Voter Kept Active—For Years

Nine months after an illegal alien’s status hit the headlines, Maryland finally took his name off the voter rolls—only after watchdogs, lawmakers, and the threat of federal court turned up the heat.

Story Snapshot

A non-citizen school superintendent stayed on Maryland’s “active” voter list for more than a decade despite a deportation order.
State officials admit they mostly “take the voter’s word for it” on citizenship instead of running real checks.
County election bosses first hid key records, then reversed course when watchdogs threatened a federal lawsuit.
The case exposes how loopholes and red tape can leave illegal aliens on voter rolls while citizens worry about election integrity.

How An Illegal Alien Ended Up On Maryland’s Voter Rolls

Ian Andre Roberts, a Guyanese national and former Baltimore school official who later ran Iowa’s largest school system, managed to register as a voter in Maryland and stay on the rolls for years.^[1]^[8] Records show he affirmatively claimed to be a United States citizen on his voter registration form, even though federal immigration authorities had ordered him removed from the country.^[1]^[2] Maryland law clearly says only United States citizens can register to vote, under penalty of perjury, yet the system still accepted his claim.^[8]

Roberts was arrested in Iowa in September 2025 for being an illegal alien in possession of firearms, which brought fresh attention to his background and legal status.^[2] After the arrest, Maryland Republican lawmakers and election watchdog groups discovered that he remained listed as an active voter in Prince George’s County, years after he had moved away and long after he should have been ineligible.^[3]^[8] The situation raised an obvious question for many citizens: if this one case slipped through for so long, how many others like it are still buried in the voter files?

Nine Months Of Delays, Excuses, And Outside Pressure

According to one watchdog group tracking the case, Roberts was still on Maryland’s voter rolls more than eight months after his arrest and three months after he pled guilty and admitted he was not a citizen.^[3] County election officials at first released only redacted copies of his registration that hid his answer to the basic question, “Are you a U.S. citizen?”^[1] They produced the full, unredacted records only after Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections and the American Accountability Foundation sent a formal demand under the National Voter Registration Act and warned of imminent federal litigation.^[1]

That pressure campaign also drew in Congress. The House Administration Committee, led by Chairman Bryan Steil, sent a letter to the Maryland State Board of Elections demanding answers about how a known non-citizen could register at least twice and remain on the rolls for so long.^[2]^[4] Their letter warned that repeated redactions around Roberts’s registration suggested Maryland was either hiding a serious mistake or covering up a failure to verify citizenship.^[2]^[4] Republican lawmakers in Maryland added their own letter, saying the case cast doubt on the accuracy of the state’s voter lists and demanding a full review.^[8]

Maryland’s “Trust The Applicant” System And Why It Failed

Maryland’s own election chief has admitted that the state mostly relies on what applicants write on the form instead of checking citizenship against independent records.^[5] In a public statement on non-citizen inquiries, State Board of Elections Administrator Jared DeMarinis explained that “when an individual registers to vote, election officials rely on the information that is provided by the voter.”^[5] He also said that non-citizen removals usually start only when a voter self-reports or when jury commissioners flag someone as a non-citizen.^[1]^[5]

Maryland’s list-maintenance rules say officials can cancel a registration after notice if a jury commission reports that a voter is a non-citizen, or if other specific government sources confirm ineligibility.^[11] Officials also stress that federal law, including the National Voter Registration Act, limits when a state can remove someone without the voter’s signature.^[11] Those protections are meant to stop wrongful purges of real citizens, but in Roberts’s case, they meant even a long-standing federal deportation order did not automatically trigger removal from the rolls.^[1] The system gave every benefit of the doubt to the registrant, not to the integrity of the list.

Election Integrity Concerns In A Broader National Fight

Nationally, many studies say proven non-citizen voting is extremely rare, measured in a handful of cases out of tens of millions of ballots.^[21]^[22]^[23] That argument is now used by election lawyers and progressive groups to oppose stronger proof-of-citizenship requirements, calling them a “solution in search of a problem.”^[18]^[19]^[21] But cases like Roberts show how just one determined non-citizen, helped by lax checks and layers of bureaucracy, can stay on the books for more than a decade and even survive a deportation order without triggering an automatic fix.^[1]^[3]^[8]

🗳️ The Other Maryland Man finally removed from Maryland Voter Registration list.

9 months after it was discovered that a superintendent of a large school district was not only a noncitizen with a final deportation order, but also had been illicitly registered to vote in… pic.twitter.com/xqKTCskJQR

— Maryland Freedom Caucus (@MDFreedomCaucus) June 19, 2026

For many conservative voters, this is not about proving millions of illegal votes. It is about whether state officials respect the basic rule that only citizens pick our leaders and write our laws. In Maryland, some local towns even allow non-citizens to vote in certain local elections, which makes tight separation and careful list management even more important.^[12]^[20] Yet this case shows a system that shrugs at red flags and moves only when watchdogs and Congress apply public pressure.