Detecting and prosecuting voter fraud in swing states: The case of ineligible citizens in Texas, but not necessarily in good faith
“States have very effective protections in place to prevent and detect voter fraud,” Clapman said. “And then it is always important to be reminded that the penalty for voter fraud is enormous.”
Election officials regularly verify voter registration information and remove ineligible voters from voter rolls. Some states verify citizenship by cross-checking voter information with other databases, such as state motor vehicle data or the federal SAVE database. An immigrant may not be shown in a voter rolls if they are not a naturalized citizen, so election officials must be careful when removing eligible voters. Large numbers of eligible citizens were wrongly flagged for removal in Texas.
“These numbers don’t distinguish between, you know, an allegation that may be incorrect or a situation where someone has voted in good faith incorrectly,” she said.
Conservative groups lump all cases where a voter thought they were eligible together with cases where someone was going to commit fraud.
Clapman said a lot of these cases involve people who at one point lost their voting rights due to a felony conviction. There is a case in Texas where a woman named Crystal Mason claims she was eligible to vote despite being arrested for alleged illegal voting after she got a voter registration card.
And even when cases do make it to court, they are sometimes thrown out or face a difficult path through the legal system. This occurs when ineligible voters mistakenly vote in good faith and think they are eligible.
Clapman thinks there is a big discrepancy between the reality and the rhetoric when it comes to how often voter fraud is identified and referred for prosecution.
The AP contacted election officials in swing states after the 2020 election. In their analysis, they found 475 potential voter fraud cases — which amounts to an extraordinarily small percentage of the more than 25 million ballots that were cast in those six states.
In a statement, LaRose’s office said they had referred a total of 630 cases to prosecutors “over the course of multiple elections” — while also noting “voter fraud continues to be exceedingly rare” in the state.
The answer has been for a long time that this is extremely rare. Courts sometimes conclude that the evidence isn’t there when they look at specific evidence.
A NPR/PBS News/Marist Survey of the U.S. Demographics Using the Brennan Center, and Just Facts: Six facts about false noncitizen voting claims and the election
According to the new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll, that is. Republicans have been raising concern about the validity of the U.S. elections for a number of years.
A Brennan Center survey did not take into account North Carolina, where a state audit after the 2016 election found that 41 green card holders voted out of over 4 million votes in the state. The same report said many of the noncitizen voters had been misinformed that they could vote.
Over the past 25 years, an audit done by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has discovered that fewer than 1,700 people believed to be noncitizens attempted to register to vote. None was able to cast a ballot.
After a federal trial last year over Arizona’s documentary proof of citizenship laws, the federal judge concluded, “though it may occur, non-citizens voting in Arizona is quite rare, and non-citizen voter fraud in Arizona is rarer still.”
The American Immigration Council analyzed Heritage data and found most noncitizen voting casesInvolve legal immigrants and many have been wrongly told they can vote. The analysis found only 10 cases of immigrants who weren’t legally in the country. Heritage has said the database is just a sampling of fraud cases and is not comprehensive.
Nevertheless, Trump seized on and distorted Richman’s estimates to fuel false claims in 2016 that millions of noncitizens had illegally voted. In the aftermath, some 200 fellow political scientists wrote an open letter rejecting the 2014 paper. Just Facts published a report based on the discredited estimates of the paper in May. That report made the disputed claim that 10% to 27% of noncitizens are illegally registered to vote, which went viral on X and was cited in congressional testimony.
Source: 6 facts about false noncitizen voting claims and the election
Why aren’t Noncitizens in the U.S.-Mexico Elections? Critics of Donald Trump and his Allies
Washington, D.C., and a small number of municipalities in California, Maryland and Vermont do allow noncitizens to vote in some local elections, such as city council or school board races. This population has had low turnout so far. There are systems in place to prevent non-citizens from voting for other races in federal and state elections.
The people who arrived at the U.S.- Mexico border under the Biden administration can become citizens and vote legally, according to a false narrative this campaign season. Most of the migrants don’t have a path to citizenship. For the minority who will ultimately be granted asylum, it often takes more than a decade from the time they enter the country to go through all the steps to win their cases and ultimately naturalize. Furthermore, changes to asylum protocols during the Biden administration have made it harder to pursue asylum in this country and eventually become a citizen.
By focusing on baseless allegations about noncitizens voting in the upcoming election, Trump and his allies appear to be laying the groundwork for potentially contesting the election.
Voting rights advocates say these penalties have worked as effective deterrents. Sylvia Albert, the director of voting and elections for Common Cause, said that green card holders are not trying to be arrested or thrown out of the country.
The GOP made changing the federal law to require proof of citizenship a priority. Opponents point out that millions of eligible voters — about 1 in 10 adult U.S. citizens, according to one recent survey — don’t have ready access to documents that prove their citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, and would face hurdles to vote.
Donald Trump and others in the Presidential campaign have been telling the truth that Democrats are encouraging migrants to come into the country so they can vote.