Speaker of the House Mike Johnson announced on Friday that Republicans in Congress plan to introduce a bill aimed at preventing what he claims is a “threat of fraud” from noncitizens voting. However, existing data and studies indicate that there is no actual problem to be addressed in this regard.
While standing beside former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Johnson failed to provide any evidence of past fraud committed by undocumented immigrants. Instead, he emphasized the need to take action before widespread fraud takes place.
According to experts interviewed by USA TODAY, claims that noncitizens are manipulating elections are unfounded and, at worst, xenophobic falsehoods that undermine confidence in the electoral system.
According to Michael Waldman, the president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, the notion that large numbers of unidentified individuals who appear different from others are voting and participating in elections is simply false. He dismisses this idea as a fear-inducing tactic rather than a reality.
In 2016, Trump won the Electoral College while losing the popular vote. He made the unsubstantiated claim that he would have won the popular vote if illegal votes were deducted. These baseless allegations of voter fraud were also used to dispute his defeat in the 2020 election. Eventually, this led to the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, carried out by his supporters.
Noncitizen voting is virtually nonexistent
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Federal law already prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections. Only a negligible number of noncitizens have mistakenly cast their ballots, and their votes have had an insignificant impact on the outcomes of any race.
According to a study conducted by the Brennan Center in 2017, it was found that out of 42 jurisdictions examined, only two had instances of improper noncitizen voting. These cases amounted to just 30 out of over 23 million votes cast, which represents a mere 0.0001% of the total votes in those areas.
According to William Adler, the associate director of the elections project at the Bipartisan Policy Center, the instances of noncitizens voting in federal elections are extremely rare. He emphasizes that while there have been some cases, the number is negligible when compared to the overall number of votes cast.
The Brennan Center study also examined the states of Virginia, New Hampshire, and California, which were all accused by Trump of having “serious voter fraud” in 2016. According to the study, conversations with elections administrators in these states revealed that no incidents of noncitizen voting were identified.
In 2017, a permanent resident and mother of four in Texas was prosecuted for voting illegally, leading to a sentence of eight years in prison. According to her lawyer, the woman had arrived in the U.S. as an infant and was unaware of her ineligibility to vote.
According to Adler, most of these cases typically involve individuals who genuinely believed they had the right to vote. This highlights the importance of improving voter outreach and education to enhance people’s understanding of the elections process.
Growing concern about noncitizen voting
Under the federal law, noncitizen voting is prohibited. Furthermore, the National Voter Registration Act stipulates that individuals who register to vote must affirm, under the risk of perjury, that they meet the eligibility requirements.
Johnson is putting forward a new legislation that would mandate Americans to furnish proof of citizenship during voter registration and require states to eliminate noncitizens from voter rolls. (It is worth noting that the federal law already stipulates a procedure that states must follow to purge their voter rolls.)
According to Johnson, the presence of a large number of undocumented immigrants in the country raises concerns about potential voter influence. He suggests that even if only a small percentage of them were to vote, their collective impact could be significant, potentially affecting the outcome of both congressional and presidential elections.
Several liberal cities have made the decision to grant noncitizens the right to vote in local elections, while still maintaining the restriction for state and federal elections.
According to Helen Brewer, a policy specialist for the National Conference of State Legislatures, no state constitution permits noncitizens to participate in state or federal elections. In fact, seven states, including swing states like Arizona and Colorado, have specifically implemented bans on noncitizen voting.
In the upcoming November elections, the number of states considering amendments to ban noncitizen voting in their constitutions is expected to rise. According to Brewer, four states – Iowa, Idaho, Kentucky, and Wisconsin – are set to have ballot measures for this purpose. It is worth noting that Wisconsin, a battleground state that was won by former President Trump in 2016 but recaptured by President Joe Biden in 2020, is among the states with such proposed amendments.
The Great Replacement theory
Some people have made claims about noncitizen voting that are reminiscent of the Great Replacement theory, a white supremacist ideology that attributes the nation’s changing demographics to Jews. This theory has unfortunately inspired mass shooters in Pittsburgh and Buffalo. Republicans across the country have been echoing a similar narrative, accusing Democrats of bringing in new voters to secure electoral victories.
According to Johnson, the increase in immigrants under Democratic leadership is part of their plan to convert these individuals into voters. However, he did not provide any evidence to support this claim, merely stating that social services agencies often assist people in registering to vote.
According to Secretary of State Jane Nelson, voter registrations in Texas, which shares the longest border with Mexico in the country, have declined. In a news release, she stated that the state recorded approximately 58,000 new registrations through April 3 this year. This number is lower compared to the 65,000 registrations during the same period in 2022 and the 104,000 registrations in 2020.
Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who participated in Trump’s well-known phone call in 2020, where he pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, to “find” votes in order to secure his election victory, is now promoting her new initiative, known as the Election Integrity Network. Mitchell asserts that noncitizens are voting, despite Raffensperger’s refusal to fulfill Trump’s request.
“The claim that the 2020 election was stolen from President Trump through voting-machine irregularities, foreign intervention, or outright fraud, which was once seen as fantastical, has now become monotonous, uninspiring, and disheartening,” expressed Raffensperger in an article for National Review, a conservative magazine, in January.
In February, Mitchell expressed her concern about an alleged invasion of aliens from the southern border during an interview with a conservative radio host. She asserted that these individuals, whose identities were unknown, were not citizens but were being registered to vote. However, no evidence was provided to support this claim.
Secretaries of state ‘not aware’ of noncitizen voting
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, maintains a comprehensive database of voter fraud cases in the United States. According to their records, there have been 21 instances of ineligible voting, which encompasses individuals who either registered to vote or cast their ballots despite not being citizens. It is worth noting that the foundation acknowledges that their database may not capture every single case of voter fraud.
However, secretaries of state from both political parties, who are responsible for overseeing elections, have consistently refuted allegations of widespread election fraud and noncitizen voting.
According to the National Association of Secretaries of State in 2017, its members stated that there is no evidence supporting the voter fraud claims made by President Trump.
According to USA TODAY, Kentucky has a proposed amendment on the ballot in November to ban noncitizen voting. Michon Lindstrom, spokesperson for Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams, stated that noncitizens are not allowed to vote in Kentucky, and there have been no reported cases of noncitizens voting.
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