The GOP is focusing election concerns on non-citizen voting, but that rarely happens

Donald Trump and his Republican allies have raised alarm that foreign voters could illegally tip the scales in the 2024 presidential election, but state voter registration lawsuits have shown that this could have a potential impact on the ticket. relatively small.

The lawsuit, brought by Republican groups in two swing states where the margin of victory may be close – Nevada and Arizona – alleges that thousands of names on the voter rolls are foreign or were not properly vetted.

There are indications that the lawsuits filed in Nevada by the Republican National Committee and in Arizona by a legal group led by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller could be used as fodder to challenge the results in those states and challenge the election results.

Members of Congress do lifted up this issue, and election officials in some states have sought to remove non-citizens from voter rolls. Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary for the Trump campaign, said the Biden administration’s policies have enabled more illegal immigration and “Democrats insist that non-citizens can vote and influence the future of our country.”

But research by right-wing think tanks is among reviews that question how often those registrations turn into actual votes, since federal law prohibits noncitizens from casting ballots in federal elections.

The Cato Institute says the percentage of foreigners voting is closer to zero than 1 percent. A database maintained by the conservative Heritage Foundation shows there are only 85 cases involving allegations of non-citizen voting between 2002 and 2023.

Carah Ong Whaley, vice president for election protection at the Washington-based political reform group Issue One, said that based on numerous studies, it was “very unlikely” that foreign voting could occur at a pace that would affect the election outcome .

Regarding criminal penalties for non-citizens who finish casting their ballot, Whaley said the issue “is overblown” and the true nature is “to introduce a demand into the election cycle… an attempt to undermine confidence and sow doubt.”

“Should we tighten the systems and ensure that only eligible voters vote? Sure, right?” Whaley said. “But the penalties are so high that it’s just not happening at a rate that would impact the outcome of the election, and certainly not in the states.”

This does not prevent Congress and state officials from taking action to remove noncitizens from voter rolls before elections as part of the regular maintenance of lists of eligible voters.

Speakers Mike Johnson, R-La. and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, led unsuccessfully effort make the so-called SAVE Act, which would in part require states to remove noncitizens from official voter rolls, as part of spending legislation to avoid a government shutdown.

The highlight of the litigation in this case was that the Department of Justice filed lawsuits in Virginia and Alabama to enforce a federal law that prevents election officials from removing names from voter rolls too close to the election, in part because of the risk of a voter’s name legally being removed.

But even there, the numbers appear to be different from those that could be relevant in the presidential race. The The Supreme Court allowed it on Wednesday Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s voter suppression effort purged 1,600 people in a state initiative announced in September. Four years ago, President Joe Biden received about 450,000 more votes in the commonwealth than Trump.

In Alabama, officials identified 3,251 people on the lists as non-citizens, though that number is disputed. In 2020, Trump received about 500,000 more votes than Biden in the state.

In other states, there are much fewer foreigners on the electoral rolls. Georgia announced that it had conducted a review of its electoral rolls and found only 20 foreigners on the lists.

The Republican National Committee’s Oct. 12 letter to the Maine Secretary of State is based on findings that 18 people who were not citizens of the country agreed to MaineCare services in violation of the rules. When these names were tabulated, six people were registered to vote, including five who had voted in the 2016 election, all of whom were registered Democrats, according to an October report in Maine Wire. The RNC says the numbers are based on a small sample, but further analysis “could have provided even more samples of foreigners registered and voting.”

In Nevada, the RNC counts more than 6,300 foreigners registered to vote, of which 3,987 voted in the previous election. The numbers are based on Department of Motor Vehicle records from December 2020 of people who provided immigration documentation when obtaining a driver’s license or ID card in the past five years, which were then compared to a statewide registration list.

Separate estimates in the RNC lawsuit, based on extrapolation of polling data, estimate that as many as 11,220 foreigners registered to vote in 2022.

Whaley questioned how some tables estimate the number of foreigners on the ballot in some states, saying they are “pretty vague” and may simply be a result of citizen eligibility that has not yet been confirmed.

“It’s not always the case that the numbers we see include … the full list of registered foreign nationals,” Whaley said. “And when we look deeper, for example in the Virginia case, we don’t know how many of those people they potentially identified voted at all. This has not been explained.”

America First Legal, a law firm run by Miller, filed a lawsuit in August against 15 Arizona counties, including the largest, Maricopa County, alleging that foreigners were on the rolls registered to vote. The lawsuit estimates that 35,273 registered voters in Arizona failed to provide proof of citizenship under Arizona law.

Whaley noted, however, that Arizona has a two-way process in which residents can register to vote either through a state form that requires proof of citizenship or a registration form prepared by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Arizona could not impose a proof of citizenship requirement on voters who registered using the federal form, but that made them eligible to vote only in federal races.

“I see that the America First complaint cites numerous studies regarding voter concerns and growth solely at the federal level, but I see no direct evidence in the complaint regarding non-citizen voting,” Whaley said.

A later Arizona law, passed in 2022, however, requires Arizona to determine whether these federally-only voters are citizens upon registration, which is the basis of America First’s legal challenge.

Despite the penalties, there are documented cases of non-citizens willing to vote in elections. Michigan officials on Wednesday revealed that a 19-year-old student from Ann Arbor, Michigan, who is not a U.S. citizen and is now charged with two felonies, voted over the weekend.

The student’s vote, who is a Chinese citizen, will still count in the election even though it was cast illegally because election officials have no way of retrieving it now that it has been tabulated, the Detroit News reports.

Domestic breed potential

While the margins in presidential elections are wide enough that the numbers cited in these findings are highly unlikely to have an impact, other races may be a different story. Senate races may be comparable in presidential contests because they are based on statewide results.

But congressional races may be different. The distribution of the electorate in these contests is much smaller, which may mean that a concentrated number of votes can have an impact.

Nathan Gonzales, editor and publisher of Inside Elections, said any additional information on the voter rolls could have an impact on congressional races where the margin of victory can be extremely narrow, such as the contests in Virginia’s 2nd and 7th districts.

“In tight races, anything can matter,” said Gonzales, who is also an elections analyst for CQ Roll Call. “It’s hard to isolate individual factors… but again, when you’re talking about close races, everything tends to… anything and everything can make a difference.”

Gonzales said that “people who are not citizens should not vote in federal elections anyway.”

“I am skeptical that there is a large or significant number of people in the country illegally who want to commit crimes,” he said.

Gonzales predicted that the occurrence of lawsuits challenging the presence of foreigners on the electoral rolls could potentially be used as a pretext to baselessly challenge the results of the 2024 elections.

“Some Republicans are using lawsuits and the possibility of fraud to sow distrust in the electoral system … and to cast doubt on … the results and justify actions to change them,” Gonzales said.