A British citizen has won a city council seat in rural Kansas, unseating an incumbent after he didn't even campaign.
Adam Baker, the 32-year-old owner of a grain hauling company, received 62 write-in votes Tuesday for a seat on the Lucas City Council, narrowly defeating Councilwoman Tamara Seirer, who received 59 votes and appeared on the ballot, The Salina Journal reported. Baker is unlikely to ever take the seat, as he is still in the process of becoming an American citizen. Lucas is a town of 393 people in the western-central part of the state.
"I said, 'You can do what you want. It's a free country.' I don't know if I'm even allowed to or not, because of my status," Baker told The Salina Journal.
Russell County Clerk Mary Nuss told The Huffington Post that Baker will be issued a certificate of election on Monday when the county commission officially confirms the vote. He is unlikely to take office, she said, as he is not a U.S. citizen and therefore is ineligible to vote -- a requirement for holding the City Council seat.
Kay Curtis, a spokesman for Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), said that Baker cannot take office and it would be up to Lucas officials to fill the vacancy in compliance with city law.
"To his credit, he did not register to vote because he is not a citizen," Curtis told HuffPost.
Kobach has been pushing for stricter voter identification laws in Kansas in an effort to crack down on what he believes is potential voter fraud in the state. The move has angered Democrats, who have claimed that Kobach is trying to decrease votes from Democrats in the state.
Baker's election comes roughly six months after the all-Republican Kansas Objections Board, chaired by Kobach, briefly took up a case challenging President Barack Obama's eligibility to appear on the ballot, questioning his citizenship. In this case, Joe Montgomery, a Kansas State University employee, claimed that Obama was not a U.S. citizen since his father was a British and Kenyan citizen, arguing that citizenship is conferred "primarily" through the father.
The Objections Board allowed the case to proceed for several days, aiming to ask Hawaiian officials to provide information regarding Obama's birth certificate from that state. Montgomery later withdrew his objection, saying that he and his family had received threats. Birther queen Orly Taitz attempted to hijack the case, telling the Objections Board that it should investigate the issue during a meeting Kobach called to accept Montgomery's decision to withdraw the case.
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