On September 6, Johnson unveiled a continuing resolution to fund the federal government that included the text of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, “legislation backed by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump requiring proof of citizenship to vote.” As The Washington Post’s Philip Bump put it, the SAVE Act is “a Republican effort to combine election denialism and border alarmism” that “would make Americans’ lives more difficult in service of addressing a problem that is not demonstrably significant.” 

Since then, conservative cable news networks’ false claims have included suggesting that Democrats have actively encouraged noncitizens to vote in order to swing election results, stating that there have been thousands of instances of noncitizen voting, and highlighting extremely rare, individual instances of voter impersonation in order to suggest the practice is widespread.

Right-wing media and Republicans have pushed false claims that noncitizens are widely voting in elections for years — even though it has long been illegal for noncitizens to make a false claim of citizenship on a voter registration form or to vote in federal elections — and states have many measures in place to prevent noncitizens from voting. Additionally, studies have shown that voting by noncitizens is extremely rare and does not impact the final outcome of elections. But that hasn't stopped the networks from disseminating the lie.

From September 6, when Johnson unveiled a continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown that included the text of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, through October 2:

• Fox Business, Fox News, and Newsmax together made at least 141 claims falsely suggesting or fearmongering about noncitizen voters in the 2024 elections.
• Newsmax led all networks with the most false claims (65), which was followed by Fox News (42) and Fox Business (34).
• Two of Maria Bartiromo's three shows — Fox Business' Mornings with Maria and Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo — were among the top five shows with the most claims, with 20 and 11 claims, respectively. The other top shows spreading false claims about noncitizen voting were Newsmax's Rob Schmitt Tonight (16), The Chris Salcedo Show (11), and Wake Up America (10).
• Among the top offenders was Newsmax host Rob Schmitt, who had the most claims (10), followed by Newsmax host Chris Salcedo (7), Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) (5), Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) (5), and Fox anchor Maria Bartiromo (4).
• In total, 52 of the 141 claims (37%) came from Republican members of Congress.

By relentlessly pushing baseless and false claims about noncitizen voting, right-wing media are once again priming viewers to deny results of the election.

Media Matters searched transcripts in the SnapStream video database for all original programming on Fox Business Network, Fox News Channel, and Newsmax TV for any of the terms “alien,” “undocumented,” or “asylum” or any variation of the terms “migrant,” “immigrant,” or “illegal” within close proximity to any of the terms “cast,” “ballot,” “fraud,” “import,” “amnesty,” “natural,” “license,” or “identification” or any variation of the terms “vote,” “elect,” “citizen,” “noncitizen,” or “ID” from September 6, 2024, when House Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled a continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown that included the text of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, through October 2, 2024.

We included claims, which we defined as instances of uninterrupted blocks of speech from a single speaker. For host monologues, correspondent reports, and headlines, we defined a claim as the speech between read quotes and played clips. We did not consider the speech within the read quote or played clip unless a speaker in the segment positively affirmed said speech directly before or after the quote was read or the clip was played.

We then reviewed the video and transcripts for claims that suggested that Democrats or progressives have encouraged noncitizen voting in U.S. elections, suggested that noncitizens do vote in U.S. elections at all or at a rate that could influence the results, or highlighted individual cases of noncitizen voting.