A 39-year-old man in Minnesota was charged Monday with perjury and a voting violation after authorities said he registered to vote in 2023 and cast a ballot in the 2024 election, despite not being a United States citizen. Mukeshkumar Somabhai Chaudhari initially denied voting when investigators confronted him, then reversed course and admitted he "made a mistake," Fox News Digital reported.
The case lands at a moment when election integrity in Minnesota is already under a microscope. Chaudhari told authorities he did not learn he should not have voted until his own lawyer informed him during his green card process, raising pointed questions about how the state's registration system let a noncitizen through in the first place.
The charges carry serious consequences. The Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State told Fox News Digital 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.
Authorities said a voter registration notice was likely triggered after Chaudhari obtained his Minnesota driver's license. He registered to vote in 2023 and then submitted a ballot in the 2024 election. When investigators first interviewed him, he denied voting. He later changed his account and acknowledged he had voted, telling them it was a mistake.
Chaudhari also told investigators he is not a U.S. citizen, a fact that should have disqualified him at two separate checkpoints. Minnesota requires anyone completing a voter registration application to attest that they meet all eligibility requirements, including citizenship. Before casting a ballot, a voter must swear to eligibility again.
The Secretary of State's office emphasized that process in a statement to Fox News Digital:
"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 also said that noncitizen voting is "extremely rare." That framing did not sit well with critics who see a pattern of weak safeguards in the state.
Bill Glahn, a policy fellow at the Center of the American Experiment, posted on X after the charges were announced: "That thing that never ever happens happened again." Glahn had previously spoken to Fox News Digital about concerns over Minnesota's voting safeguards, including a same-day voter registration system that allows a registered voter to "vouch" for the residency of up to eight other voters without requiring an ID.
That kind of loose verification is exactly the gap that federal officials have flagged in Minnesota before. The state's honor-system approach to citizenship attestation assumes good faith from every registrant, and offers little backstop when that faith is misplaced.
State Rep. Pam Altendorf, a Republican, posted on X criticizing Minnesota Democrats and citing three specific actions she said weakened election safeguards, including the state's 46-day voting season. Townhall columnist Dustin Grage was more direct, posting: "Welcome to Tim Walz's Minnesota."
Fox News Digital reached out to Governor Walz's office for comment. The article did not report a response.
This is not the first time Minnesota's voter rolls and registration practices have drawn scrutiny. In August 2024, the Republican National Committee and the Minnesota GOP sent a letter to Secretary of State Steve Simon demanding answers after a legal noncitizen in the state received a primary ballot in the mail, without requesting one or registering to vote. The RNC and state party demanded a review of the Statewide Voter Registration System, linking the incident to concerns about Minnesota's automatic voter registration processes under the Walz administration.
In that letter, the RNC and Minnesota GOP wrote: "This incident indicates 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."
Gineen Bresso, Election Integrity Director for the RNC and Trump Campaign, said at the time: "Walz's administration has failed Minnesotans, and this election system breakdown is living proof." The Chaudhari case now gives that criticism a concrete, charged example.
Minnesota under Walz has faced a string of accountability questions that extend well beyond election administration. The state's Medicaid fraud crisis drew national attention and bipartisan criticism, and multiple fraud prosecutions have followed.
Chaudhari's claim that he simply did not know he was ineligible deserves scrutiny. Minnesota's voter registration application requires an affirmative attestation of citizenship. Before a ballot is cast, the voter must swear again. Chaudhari cleared both checkpoints, either by ignoring the plain language or by falsely attesting twice.
His account, that he only learned he should not have voted when his immigration lawyer told him during the green card process, may explain how the error came to light, but it does not explain how the state's system failed to catch it beforehand. If the only thing standing between a noncitizen and a cast ballot is a checkbox and an oath, the system is not a safeguard. It is a suggestion.
The Secretary of State's office insists that noncitizens who attempt to vote "will be caught and held to account." But Chaudhari was not caught at the point of registration. He was not caught at the point of voting. He was caught only after his own lawyer flagged the problem during a separate legal proceeding. That is not a system working as designed.
Questions about how states handle ballot eligibility have reached the highest levels of the judiciary, with the Supreme Court weighing disputes over ballot-counting timelines and related election-integrity matters.
The charging documents have not been made public in full. The specific county or court that filed the charges has not been identified in available reporting. The exact dates of Chaudhari's registration and ballot submission remain unspecified beyond the years 2023 and 2024. And the records authorities said they obtained to confirm his vote have not been described in detail.
It is also unclear whether investigators are examining other cases that may have slipped through the same gaps. If Minnesota's driver's license process can trigger a voter registration notice for a noncitizen, how many others received that notice, and how many acted on it?
The broader political backdrop in Minnesota includes ongoing friction between the state's Democratic leadership and federal enforcement priorities, including disputes over immigration policy compliance. Critics argue the state's posture toward federal law enforcement has created an environment where accountability gaps widen rather than close.
Meanwhile, the fraud prosecutions piling up in Minnesota suggest a state government that is consistently behind the curve, reacting to failures rather than preventing them.
Defenders of Minnesota's system will point out that Chaudhari was eventually caught and charged. That is true. But the system's own logic, dual attestation, penalties as deterrent, depends on catching people before they vote, not after. A ballot, once cast, cannot be uncast. A vote counted in an election cannot be surgically removed from the tally.
The Secretary of State's office calls noncitizen voting "extremely rare." Perhaps it is. But rarity is not the same as impossibility, and the Chaudhari case proves the system's front-end filters are inadequate. The question is whether Minnesota's leaders will treat this as a wake-up call or dismiss it as an isolated fluke, the way they have dismissed similar concerns before.
When the only thing protecting the ballot box is a promise, the promise had better be verified. In Minnesota, it wasn't.
