Washington, DC — The Justice Department announced election-related charges against 16 noncitizens across four states, but the small number provides little evidence that noncitizen voting occurs on anything approaching a meaningful scale in U.S. elections.
The cases involve defendants in Florida, Louisiana, Wisconsin and Minnesota accused of offenses including illegal voting, false claims of citizenship and false statements during the naturalization process. Some allegations involve registration rather than a successfully cast ballot, and at least one Minnesota case concerns the 2022 election rather than 2024. All defendants are presumed innocent unless convicted.
For perspective, the Federal Election Commission counted more than 155 million votes in the 2024 presidential race. Even if all 16 defendants represented illegal 2024 votes, which they do not that would equal roughly 0.00001%, or about one case for every 9.7 million presidential votes.
Research conducted over many years has consistently found noncitizen voting to be extraordinarily rare. States already require applicants to affirm U.S. citizenship under penalty of law and maintain procedures for identifying ineligible registrations.
The Justice Department did not disclose how much federal money or investigative manpower was spent developing the 16 cases, making it impossible to determine their total taxpayer cost.
The prosecutions show that violations can occur, but the numbers remain extraordinarily small compared with the scale of American elections.
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