On Wednesday, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced that a statewide audit of 8.2 million registered voters had found just 20 noncitizens registered to vote.
As The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported, “Nine of those 20 noncitizens cast ballots in the past, while the other 11 were registered but never actually voted, the audit showed. Election officials canceled their voter registrations and reported them to district attorneys for possible prosecution.” Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer for the secretary of state’s office, said that the “majority of the nine noncitizens who voted did so before 2012.” Sterling also said, “There is no proof that there is an overwhelming number of noncitizens on the rolls.”
WSB-TV, the ABC News affiliate in Atlanta, published an article accompanied by a television report using the same language, titled “Georgia leaders say people who aren’t U.S. citizens have tried to vote in several counties.” The article quoted Raffensperger that “we were able to conclusively find 20 non citizens who are on the voter rolls” but gave no context that this number was out of 8.2 million registered voters statewide. WSB-TV also failed to mention that only nine of those 20 noncitizens actually voted, and the outlet also didn’t mention Sterling's comments that those who did vote mostly did before 2012. The only use of Sterling’s statement was a clip in the video in which he described how they found noncitizens through jury duty affidavits.
WSB-TV’s reporting was eerily similar to Fox News’ framing of the audit. Fox correspondent Jonathan Serrie reported on Georgia conducting a “comprehensive U.S. citizenship audit that led to the immediate removal of 20 people from voter rolls,” failing to mention that there are 8.2 million registered voters included in this audit. The Fox News report played a clip of Sterling saying that “the 20 individuals we found as noncitizens who were canceled were canceled based on individualized information from those people,” but did not include any of his comments giving context that only nine had voted and mostly before 2012. Serrie repeated this report without context three additional times on Fox News’ Special Report, Fox News @ Night, and Fox Business’ The Evening Edit.
For years, right-wing media and Republican voices have promoted the false narrative that noncitizens are voting in large numbers in U.S. elections, as research has consistently shown that instances of individual noncitizens voting are exceedingly rare.