Former President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson are planning to advocate for a bill to ban non-citizens from voting. This move is seen as the latest effort by Republicans to propagate the unfounded claim that migrants are entering the country to vote illegally. Voting by non-citizens is already illegal under federal law, and it remains unclear how this proposed bill would change the existing legislation.
Despite the lack of evidence supporting widespread non-citizen voting, Trump continues to assert that such voting could influence election outcomes. A comprehensive study by the Brennan Center of the 2016 election found that only 0.0001% of votes across 42 jurisdictions were suspected to be non-citizens voting. The Heritage Foundation’s database of voter fraud cases includes just 85 instances of non-citizen voting since 2002.
Efforts to remove non-citizens from voter rolls or audit voters’ citizenship status have been undertaken in some states due to these unfounded concerns. However, voting rights advocates warn that these measures often risk erroneously removing naturalized citizens and other eligible voters from the rolls. For instance, an attempt in Texas in 2019 led to nearly 100,000 people, including U.S. citizens, being wrongly warned they might not be eligible to vote.
In general, widespread voter fraud does not exist in the U.S. While instances of voter fraud are prosecuted in every election, even statewide taskforces have been unable to uncover large numbers of cases that could potentially swing elections.
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