Illegal voting charge filed against noncitizen in Vigo County

Criminal charges have been filed against a Terre Haute man, alleging that he voted illegally in Indiana elections as a noncitizen.

The Vigo County charges announced Tuesday against Francisco Romero, 41, include one felony count each of submitting a fraudulent voter registration and perjury and three counts of casting illegal ballots in the 2022, 2023 and 2024 general elections.

The charges come 13 months after Secretary of State Diego Morales announced his office had identified a noncitizen in Vigo County who had completed voter registration with the Bureau of Motor Vehicles in 2018 and voted in six elections since then.

Attorney General Todd Rokita and Vigo County Prosecutor Terry Modesitt announced the charges that Rokita said represented the first prosecution in the state of a noncitizen for illegal voting.

Court documents filed by prosecutors say Romero was born in Mexico, has been in Indiana since 2006 and has remained in the U.S. under the the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. 

The DACA program, created by the Obama administration in 2012, is intended to help people brought into the country without legal documentation as children. 

Romero told investigators that he simply signed the voter registration forms given to him at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles branch in 2018 and 2023 and did not fill them out himself.

“He said that he did not know the box was checked saying he was a U.S. citizen,” the investigator’s affidavit said. “He claims that on both occasions, he advised the BMV employees that he is not a U.S. citizen.”

Romero was released on bond Tuesday from the Vigo County Jail, according to online court records. No defense attorney was listed for him and the Capital Chronicle couldn’t immediately determine a telephone number to contact him for comment.

The investigator’s affidavit cites BMV branch workers as having no memory of interactions with Romero, but saying that their procedure is to review the voter registration form twice with customers before they sign it.

The charges against Romero are each Level 6 felonies carrying potential sentences of six months to 2-½ years in prison.

Rokita and Morales announced last year that a federal agency review found 21 noncitizens had cast ballots in recent Indiana elections, along with 165 noncitizens who registered to vote in the state.

There are 4.7 million registered voters in Indiana.

“Voting by illegal aliens and other noncitizens is unacceptable, and anyone who commits that act must face consequences,” Rokita said in a Tuesday statement. “Two years ago, I started a process to verify the citizenship status of registered voters in Indiana and was successful in obtaining that data from the federal government. Now, we are acting on that information and it’s certainly not the end of our enforcement.”