Andrea Austria
Andrea Austria / Media Matters

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Right-wing media figures are exploiting state clerical errors and voter roll purges to fearmonger about mass voting by noncitizens

Right-wing media figures are accusing Democrats of “cheating,” though audits and studies have repeatedly shown that noncitizen voting rarely happens at all

Written by Jack Winstanley

Published

Conservative outlets and media figures are amplifying reports of clerical errors, state voter roll audits, and Republican lawsuits to push a narrative that noncitizens are being widely allowed to vote in elections, despite evidence that very few votes are actually cast — and this right-wing framing is being used to argue that Democrats will “cheat” in November’s election. Meanwhile, multiple GOP-led states are pushing for voter roll purges that disenfranchise thousands of legal voters.

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  • Right-wing media figures and politicians have stoked fears of mass voting by noncitizens, despite evidence that it rarely happens

    • Right-wing media figures and politicians have repeatedly evoked the specter of mass voting by noncitizens to promote supposed “election integrity” measures and stricter voter ID laws. Right-wing figures are fixated on voters registered through DMV offices and driver's license applications as a potential source of mass voter fraud. This fixation follows years of right-wing media figures conflating “voter fraud” with registration inaccuracies to claim that “dead people” and “illegal aliens” are casting ballots. [Media Matters, 7/11/24, 2/21/16]
    • Fox News has spent months pushing the false narrative that undocumented immigrants are coming across the border in droves to vote in the election — with several network figures citing driver's licenses as a source of fraud. In one segment, Fox anchor Maria Bartiromo cited a debunked video in claiming that “14% of illegal immigrants admitted that they are registered to vote.” In another, host Jeanine Pirro baselessly claimed that migrants are “lining up to vote right now, given driver’s license.” [Media Matters, 9/16/24]
    • Right-wing media figures have also repeatedly pushed the “great replacement” conspiracy theory — accusing Democrats of weaponizing the immigration system for their own electoral gain. Conservatives have claimed that the Biden administration is allowing “a wide open border” in order to sway electoral and census data so Democrats “can get more Electoral College votes so they can find another way to rig elections.” [Media Matters, 3/4/24, 3/26/24, 1/12/24, 6/30/22]
    • Right-wing media pushed conspiracy theories that helped to successfully convince six Republican-led states to pull out of an interstate voter data-sharing effort over bogus claims of inflated voter rolls. Right-wing media claimed that the Electronic Registration Information Center — a system for states to share voter registration data for cleanup and auditing — is really a “left wing voter registration drive disguised as voter roll clean up.” [Media Matters, 5/4/23]
    • Numerous studies — including from right-wing organization The Heritage Foundation — have concluded that noncitizen voting is extremely rare and does not influence election outcomes. A 2017 study from the Brennan Center for Justice analyzed 23.5 million ballots from 42 jurisdictions and found only 30 cases of potential noncitizen voting. An audit of Georgia’s voter rolls found less than 2,000 instances of noncitizens attempting to register to vote over the last 25 years, with none being accepted and allowed to vote. [The Associated Press, 10/19/22; Brennan Center for Justice, 5/5/17; Georgia Secretary of State, 4/11/22; Immigration Impact, 8/1/24]
    • It is illegal for noncitizens to make a false claim of citizenship on a voter registration form and to vote in federal elections. As noted by Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the Brennan Center Voting Rights Program at New York University’s school of law, “making a false claim of citizenship on a voter registration form is a federal criminal offense that carries steep penalties, including deportation.” [Democracy Docket, 7/9/24; NPR, 4/12/24; PolitiFact, 5/20/24]

  • Oregon, Arizona, and Ohio recently reported issues that apparently registered some noncitizens to vote

    • In Oregon, an oversight with the state's automatic voter registration system allowed 306 noncitizens to be registered — with two casting ballots since 2021. According to the Oregon Department of Transportation, the error occurred as part of a “data entry issue” with driver's license applications after state law allowed noncitizens to obtain a license in 2019. [The Associated Press, 9/16/24; Oregon Post Beacon, 9/13/24]
    • Arizona officials are addressing a “clerical error” where nearly 100,000 registered voters — most of whom are legitimate voters — were mistakenly recorded as having provided documentation proving their citizenship. Such documentation is only required in Arizona to be eligible to vote in state and local elections and would not impact anyone’s ability to vote in the 2024 presidential election. According to the Arizona secretary of state, the error is limited to individuals who were issued a license before October 1996. The Washington Post reports that according to state officials, the affected voters “skewed Republican, and nearly all of them appeared to be citizens.” [NPR, 9/17/24; CNN, 9/17/24, 9/20/24; The Washington Post, 9/28/24]
    • In Ohio, a routine audit of voter rolls identified a possible few hundred individuals — a small fraction of the state’s electorate — who either registered to vote or cast a ballot despite being noncitizens. CNN explains: “In a state with about 8 million registered voters, a recent review of Ohio’s voter rolls resulted in the removal of 154,995 abandoned or inactive voter registrations. A far smaller number, 597, have been referred by Secretary of State Frank LaRose to the state’s attorney general for ‘further review and potential prosecution’ for possibly registering to vote as a noncitizen. However, an even smaller number, 138, ‘appear to have cast a ballot in an Ohio election.’” [CNN, 9/12/24; The Associated Press, 8/21/24; Ohio Capital Journal, 9/14/24]

  • Republicans are using claims of noncitizen voting to push for voter roll purges, disenfranchising citizens and legitimate voters

    • Republican officials in several states have launched investigations into potential cases of noncitizens being registered. In Alabama, 3,200 people were identified by the secretary of state as part of an initiative to identify noncitizen voters. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced that “over 6,500 potential noncitizens” were removed from the state's voter rolls. [NPR, 8/30/24; Texas Monthly, 9/18/24]
    • Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, the Trump campaign and its allies have filed lawsuits in seven states preemptively claiming that the election will be affected by noncitizen voting. According to Reuters, the lawsuits filed in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Kansas, and Texas alleged that the states’ automatic voter registration program was a partisan attempt to register Democrats. A lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee and North Carolina GOP alleges that the state “allowed over 225,000 people to register to vote” without proper citizenship documentation. In Nevada, the Trump campaign, state GOP, and RNC filed a lawsuit alleging that the secretary of state has improperly managed voter rolls allowing noncitizens to be registered. [Reuters, 9/19/24; Democracy Docket, 8/26/24; Nevada Independent, 9/15/24]
    • Republican-led purges of active voter rolls have disenfranchised naturalized citizens who are eligible to vote across the country. In 2023, Democrats in Virginia called for an investigation after thousands of voters were mistakenly removed from state voter rolls. Several individuals who were mistakenly removed from Alabama’s voter roll in 2024 have been left with little recourse, and over 14,000 registered voters in Tennessee received letters stating they had to prove citizenship under threat of felony charges. Ahead of his successful 2018 gubernatorial campaign, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp removed over 560,000 voters from the state roll over supposed “inactivity,” but a separate investigation found that 107,000 of them were still eligible to vote. [NPR, 11/1/23, 8/30/24; Newsweek, 11/1/23; American Public Media, 10/29/19]

  • Right-wing media figures have exploited the recently reported errors, state audits, and Republican lawsuits to fearmonger about noncitizens voting en masse and accuse Democrats of trying to cheat in elections

    • The New York Post amplified a Republican lawsuit to claim that noncitizens voting could “tip the presidential race in Nevada.” The article also uncritically parrots the claim from a Trump campaign lawsuit that “an estimated 3,700+ [noncitizens] will cast a ballot in November’s presidential election,” and directly connects the suit to right-wing intentions of “purging rolls,” specifically citing the “close results” of recent state elections. [New York Post, 9/13/24]
    • Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room to celebrate removing “over 600 noncitizens on the voter rolls,” admitting “that’s a small number out of 8 million” voters registered in the state. [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 9/10/24]
    • In an article discussing a forthcoming audit of Pennsylvania’s voter roll, The Federalist embedded a social media post claiming the Commonwealth's automatic voter registration system was implemented so Democrats “can register the illegals to vote.” [The Federalist, 9/16/24]
    • Reacting to reports of “Nearly 100,000 Swing State Voters” potentially receiving the wrong ballots in Arizona, right-wing social media figure Phillip Buchanan, known online as “Catturd,” claimed that “Democrats are already cheating in every way possible.” [Twitter/X, 9/19/24; Daily Dot, 11/17/23]
    • Sharing a post about the Nevada lawsuit, Buchanan stated, “All Democrats do is cheat.” [Twitter/X, 9/20/24]
    • Conservative commentator Steve Guest claimed that Oregon’s clerical error “was not a ‘mistake’” but rather is “a feature of their bad policies.” In a second post, Guest claimed that “the ‘mistakes’ happen in the same direction seemingly all of the time. A Democrat state registers a bunch of non citizens to vote.” [Twitter/X, 9/14/24, 9/24/24]
    • Conservative author and radio host Bo Snerdley speculated that the Oregon DMV may have registered additional noncitizens, claiming “300 is what they are admitting to. Who knows if that's real or not.” [Twitter/X, 9/14/24]
    • The Federalist connected a single case of a noncitizen charged for voting in Iowa to the supposed “growing threat of noncitizen voting, particularly in light of the border crisis.” The article fearmongered “that the federal government only prosecuted 35 cases of illegal aliens voting in U.S. elections in 21 years, despite the fact that untold millions have poured across the southern border at the same time,” claiming “that at least tens-of-thousands had been illegally registered to vote.” [The Federalist, 9/25/24]
    • Infowars host Alex Jones claimed that the Arizona Supreme Court’s ruling “proves Arizona was stolen in 2020. That means Trump won and is the real president.” [Twitter/X, 9/21/24]
    • A segment on Fox News’ America Reports discussing voter roll purges featured Chad Ennis, the vice president of election denial organization the Honest Elections Project, who stated that noncitizen voting “certainly probably has” impacted a U.S. election, calling it “silly” to suggest otherwise. [Fox News, America Reports, 9/6/24; Media Matters, 10/27/22]
    • Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo said that “a lot of Republicans are saying illegals coming from the open border are being given driver's licenses and are wanting to get registered to vote.” Bartiromo also suggested that the Biden administration could be responsible for the errors in Oregon and other states, asking, “Hasn't the Biden administration been very clear that it's a whole-of-government plan to get every agency involved in the election?” [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria, 9/18/24]