The noise from President Donald Trump and his allies about alleged threats to vote for non-U.S. citizens is growing louder as the November election approaches. He is pushing for the United States Postal Service to send mail-in ballots only to voters verified as American citizens. The Census Bureau promoted a dubious report on thousands of noncitizens who voted in 2020, an election that the Republican lost to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump’s Department of Homeland Security claims, without providing evidence, that 250,000 noncitizens could be on the lists in just four states. This week, Maine’s Republican gubernatorial candidate confirmed an audio recording in which he said he plans to ask Trump’s border czar to send U.S. Marshals and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to polling places in the state to ensure only legal voters cast their ballots. Evidence that noncitizens vote continues to “accumulate,” White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said when asked about the census report. In fact, noncitizen voting is extremely rare and is punishable as a felony that carries the potential of deportation. Still, opponents say Trump and his allies’ hyperfocus on the issue is setting the stage for legal challenges to results he may not like during midterm elections in which control of Congress is at stake. “Dismiss these misleading and deceptive claims as an excuse for disruption,” said Alexandra Chandler, director of impact programs, free and fair elections at the nonpartisan Democracy Project. “You can deny the results later.” The census reporting methodology is flawed, but it could help sow distrust. The census report, which the president cited in a Truth Social post, said it found in an “initial analysis” that 24,000 noncitizens voted illegally in 2020. It cited data from a commercially available voter file, which was cross-checked with federal records. Experts say the methodology could have generated false positives. For example, if a person’s name was linked to an incorrect address or if someone’s citizenship status had not been updated in a particular database. Details that would normally be included in such a report on error rates were missing, said Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University. However, election experts say it could help create distrust among certain voters during this year’s general election. “This is an empty folder that the administration will wave around when they say the election was fraudulent, that non-citizens voted,” Levitt said. Sign up for the Ground Game newsletter: your guide to the biggest stories in American politics, policy and elections. Electoral chiefs are baffled by the claim that there are 250,000 non-citizens on the voter rolls. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s July letter to California, Nevada, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, alleging that nearly 250,000 noncitizens were registered in those states, was met with skepticism and requests for more information. voter registration list with DHS or any other federal agency or official,” California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, a Democrat, said in response. In New Jersey, Mullin’s department said up to 35,000 noncitizens were registered. Shortly after the letter, the Democratic-controlled state revealed that about 6,600 noncitizens were incorrectly registered through its motor vehicle system in 2023 and 2024. Democratic Gov. Mikee Sherrill said those people answered “no” when asked if they were citizens, but were registered anyway. The governor said her administration found that “less than 400” of them had voted and that she had begun replacing the provider involved in the inadequate registrations. Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth, Republican Al Schmidt, said in a letter this week that DHS officials acknowledged during a recent meeting that they did not have much confidence in the 14,576 people referred to in the letter. initial were actually non-citizens incorrectly registered to vote. He said federal officials said they would provide a methodology and that Pennsylvania officials were waiting for that information. Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar, a Democrat, said he did not understand the methodology used by the federal government. election security or interfere in the midterms? The relentless attention to claims that noncitizens are botching elections in the United States comes as Trump continues to pressure Republican senators to pass a bill that would require people to show documented proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote in the midterm elections, even though millions of people do not have easy access to such records in the Senate, where even some members of the president’s party are skeptical of its provisions. A former Democratic Pennsylvania secretary of state who now runs a nonpartisan election security firm, she said she viewed the administration’s release of the census report as part of a “do whatever it takes” strategy to pass the legislation. A 2025 study from the University of Maryland estimates that 21.3 million people. in the U.S. who are eligible to vote do not have, or do not have easy access to, documents proving their citizenship Trump’s opponents say raising the specter of noncitizens voting leading to fraudulent results has less to do with maintaining the integrity of the election than with him doing everything he can to keep his party in power in Washington after November. vote as a sign that more attention was being paid to the issue in California, a state that has a handful of important elections for the US House of Representatives in November. Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli said the arrest was “the first of many to come” and warned that “it is not known how many non-citizens are currently registered to vote” in the state. trying to destabilize both confidence and the actual electoral administration. “Their efforts to destabilize electoral information and administration are not working.”
