How unfounded GOP claims about noncitizen voting could cost some eligible voters

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

At Tuesday’s presidential debate, former President Donald Trump once again asserted that “elections are bad” and that Democrats are trying to get immigrants who’ve entered the country illegally to vote. As fact checks pointed out and Votebeat has previously reported, there is no evidence of widespread noncitizen voting, and experts say it is extraordinarily rare.

Republicans, though, continue to allege that voting by noncitizens is a pressing problem that demands a legislative solution. And the assertions aren’t just political theater: They are already affecting actual voters, and the impact could grow. Trump wants Republicans to shut down the federal government until they get their way on legislation requiring everyone registering to vote to provide documentary proof of citizenship.

House Republicans first passed the legislation, known as the SAVE Act, in July. The Democratic-controlled Senate has taken no action on it. House Republicans are now attaching it to a bill that would keep the government funded until March. That legislation passed an initial procedural hurdle, but House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, called off a scheduled floor vote Wednesday saying he was still working to “build consensus” for it as members of his caucus wavered over diverging priorities.

The legislation is certainly a nonstarter in the U.S. Senate; Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democrats have made it clear they view the proof-of-citizenship legislation as a “poison pill.”

People who try to register must already attest, under penalty of perjury, that they are U.S. citizens. Any noncitizen who attempts to vote — including legal permanent residents — would be taking extraordinary risks, including a felony charge, loss of their residency status, and deportation.

So why are Republicans so focused on noncitizen voting?

Watchdogs say it’s because Republicans are laying the groundwork for Trump and others to cast doubt on the outcome of November’s election if he doesn’t win. Trump has used similar claims that way in the past, asserting that illegal voting is why he lost the popular vote in 2016, though he won that election.

“This is not intended to actually clean up the rolls,” said David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. “This is intended to set the stage for claims the election was stolen.”

Two House Republican-led committees had separate hearings on elections this week. Some Republican secretaries of state, including Cord Byrd of Florida and Frank LaRose of Ohio, urged Congress to pass the bill. Democrats pointed out repeatedly that noncitizen voting in federal elections is rare.

“Noncitizen voting does not happen in any systemic way in New Mexico or in the nation more broadly,” said New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, a Democrat, during one of the hearings, adding, “However, voters believe noncitizen voting does occur, and this impacts their overall confidence in elections.”

Feeding that belief, Republicans and allied groups have continued to file lawsuits over the voter rolls and treat noncitizen voting as an urgent issue, an approach that experts say is having consequences around the country.

In Texas and Alabama, voting watchdog groups are questioning whether state officials have removed voters within 90 days of a federal election in violation of federal law. In those states as well as Virginia and Ohio, advocates say voter removals shortly before the deadline likely included naturalized citizens who were flagged as noncitizens based on outdated records.

In Alabama, Secretary of State Wes Allen, a Republican, acknowledged in a statement that some of the individuals he flagged may have been naturalized citizens, who are eligible voters, but said such people would have to update their voter registration records with their new citizenship status in order to vote.

But this close to an election, the risk of disenfranchising or discouraging eligible voters is high. Efforts to “clean” the voter rolls have indeed wrongly or improperly ensnared eligible voters in the past. In 2019, for example, Texas officials flagged 95,000 voters whom they identified as “noncitizens” and accused broadly of voter fraud. After review, it turned out that many of the people identified on the rolls were naturalized citizens. The scandal resulted in the secretary of state resigning. The state abandoned the effort after numerous lawsuits, which resulted in the state setting new guidelines for future voter roll cleanups.

That relatively recent episode has prompted concerns about the press release put out last month by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, asserting that Texas has removed 6,500 “potential noncitizens” from its rolls since 2021.

Advocacy groups want to know how the state identified those voters as potential noncitizens, and whether those steps complied with the procedures put in place after the 2019 incident. Many of those voters, they point out, may in fact be citizens.

Nonetheless, the number in Abbott’s release is making its way into the comments made by other Republicans on the issue. For example, at the opening of a House Judiciary Committee meeting on the proof of citizenship legislation Tuesday, Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican, cited it, and he described the removed voters only as noncitizens — not “potential noncitizens.”

In response to the concerns about noncitizen voting, election officials have repeatedly stressed, in court and to the public, that there are multiple measures in place to prevent noncitizens from registering and casting ballots, and no evidence that these things are happening, outside of rare and isolated instances.

Former Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill, a Republican who left office in 2023, said in an interview that election officials perform many checks before adding a voter. In that state, “at least two people have to sign off to say that this person should be added to the voter rolls,” he said. Texas election officials, too, have emphasized the checks they use to keep voter rolls accurate and ensure only eligible voters are on them.

In Georgia in 2022, a review by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, found 1,634 potential noncitizens had attempted to register to vote between 1997 and 2022, though he said 80% were since 2016; none were permitted to register or cast a ballot.

The SAVE Act pushed by Republicans this week would require anyone registering to vote to present documentary proof of citizenship — a way, they argue, to ensure people are following the law. But not everyone has such documentation, or can easily access it. Research published last year by the Brennan Center for Justice found that more than 20 million people don’t have proof of citizenship readily available, and the percentage was higher among Americans of color.

Arizona already limits registrants without such documentation — like a birth certificate or U.S. passport — to a separate list of voters who are permitted to vote only in federal elections. A December 2023 Votebeat analysis found that these “federal only” voters are more likely to be young and living on or near college campuses; other research has found voting-age students are more likely to lack a driver’s license.

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s managing editor and is based in Washington, D.C. She edits and frequently writes Votebeat’s national newsletter. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.