Washington, DC — A major story in the New York Times on the Republican and right-wing push to advance lies and conspiracies about noncitizen immigrants allegedly voting, excerpted below, spotlights the significant effort the GOP has put behind this lie and the anti-democratic motivation behind the GOP push.
As America’s Voice and numerous experts and fact-checkers have highlighted, the conspiratorial claims are baseless. Noncitizen voting is exceedingly rare, our election systems already have built-in protections to guard against attempts and ineligible voters face a felony charge under current law and serious civil immigration consequences, such as a lifetime inability to qualify for a green card, with no waiver.
So why are Republicans relentlessly focusing on the issue? It’s part of a broader disinformation campaign designed to undermine American democracy, making immigrants out to be the villains to justify voter suppression targeted against eligible U.S. citizens and to undermine trust in our elections among the GOP base. Donald Trump and Republican congressional allies’ upcoming House hearing on noncitizen voting and their larger push to attach a related poison pill rider (the SAVE Act) to government funding bills are their latest attempts to keep the fiction moving forward and in the news.
According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
“A core part of the Republicans’ 2024 strategy is to promote the white nationalist replacement theory to undermine trust in our elections. We cannot afford to fall for this trap. This lie is being used to justify voter purges, intimidate those trying to help people register, create new bureaucratic and financial barriers to voting, and lay the groundwork for contesting the results if the Republicans don’t win.
This storyline is a smokescreen designed to advance restrictive measures that will hinder eligible U.S. citizens from voting as well as to lay the groundwork for another post-election attempt to challenge fair election results. Added together, it’s a dangerous assault on American democracy that instigates the possibility of more political violence.”
Below, find key excerpts from Alexandra Berzon’s article in the New York Times, “Republicans Seize on False Theories About Immigrant Voting:”
“…efforts to purge voter rolls of noncitizens, if not executed carefully, could add hurdles for citizens voting legally. “This narrative that noncitizens are voting is really an attack on voters of color and particularly Latino voters and new Americans,” said Hannah Fried, the executive director of All Voting is Local, a voting rights group.
But Ms. Fried and other voting rights advocates saw another risk: Several of the people raising the specter of noncitizens’ voting also led the charge to overturn Mr. Trump’s defeat in 2020. Their focus on this narrative now threatens to sow more distrust in the election system and could be used to justify election challenges should Mr. Trump lose again.
“Since 2020, we’ve seen a sustained effort to foment distrust in our election system and election results, and I think this is another effort to do more of that work,” said Jessica Marsden, a lawyer for Protect Democracy, a group that monitors threats against fair elections.
State audits and studies from groups across the political spectrum have repeatedly found that a relatively small number of noncitizens make it onto voter rolls, and a far smaller number cast ballots. A recent analysis published by the Cato Institute, the libertarian think tank, found that the number of votes cast by noncitizens discovered through state audits in 2016 ranged from three in Nevada, out of over a million votes cast, to 41 in North Carolina, where nearly five million votes were cast.
…More recently, claims about noncitizens’ voting have connected to a broader conspiracy theory, started by white supremacist groups, about immigrants arriving to “replace” U.S. citizens. Prominent Republican politicians, including Mr. Trump’s vice-presidential candidate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, and right-wing media figures have suggested that Democrats are deliberately allowing an “invasion” of immigrants and helping them vote in a bid to win elections.” (emphasis added)
Resources and Additional Background
- Univision op-ed from Vanessa Cárdenas, “How Trump’s relentless anti-immigrant focus is tied to his threats to democracy” (Spanish version here), noting in part, “This is about using this issue as a tool to further Trump’s political ambitions, even if that means suppressing the right to vote, undermining our election results, or stoking more political violence.”
- America’s Voice Substack: “GOP message in Texas: No Abuela Who Is Willing to Help Register Voters Is Safe,“ noting “GOP embraces replacement theory in all-out assault on American democracy” and reacting to Texas AG Ken Paxton’s use of the non-citizen voter lie to harass Latino residents ahead of the election, including raiding the home of an 87-year-old great-grandmother.
- Listen to July press briefing with America’s Voice, the Brennan Center for Justice, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, UnidosUS, and Declaration for American Democracy to discuss the far-right disinformation campaign around non-citizen voting ahead of an earlier SAVE Act vote in the House.
