Donald Trump and his Republican allies have consistently claimed that Democrats are seeking to let undocumented immigrants vote in the U.S. election, but actual evidence of non-citizen voting remains virtually nonexistent. During a recent debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump claimed Democrats were trying to “get illegal immigrants to vote.” This assertion has been further fueled by a series of paid Republican ads on social media platforms, with more than 100 ads targeting the topic on Facebook and Instagram since September, according to BBC Verify.
But it’s illegal for non-citizens to vote in national elections in the United States under the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, with stiff penalties, including jail time and deportation. Measures like cross-referencing voter rolls with citizenship and immigration records make it very difficult for non-citizens to vote without detection. In addition, studies repeatedly show that instances of illegal immigrant voting in U.S. elections are exceedingly rare. The Brennan Center for Justice found only about 30 suspected cases out of 23.5 million votes cast across 12 states in 2016, representing 0.0001% of all ballots. Similarly, the Heritage Foundation’s analysis of cases from 1999 to 2023 revealed only 77 cases of non-citizens voting.
Despite this data, the narrative persists in GOP circles, with some Republican legislators pushing for stricter citizenship verification requirements, citing audits that show small numbers of non-citizens incorrectly flagged on voter rolls. In states like Ohio, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, such audits flagged several hundred cases for review out of millions of registered voters. Nonetheless, these cases remain exceedingly rare and often involve administrative errors or small, isolated incidents.
BBC Verify found that Republican-sponsored ads raising doubts about the integrity of the voting process were seen between 7.8 and nine million times on social media. Many of these ads directly or indirectly imply that non-citizen voting is a widespread issue, even though studies continue to demonstrate otherwise.
