In the U.S. elections voter fraud is very rare

In-person vs. mail-in: Detecting and prosecuting illegal voter removal in some states, according to the Brennan Center for Justice

Depending on the type of voting — in-person vs. mail-in — there are also a host of protections that would keep someone from casting a ballot that isn’t theirs, or from voting altogether if they are ineligible. That includes things like signature matching, drop box surveillance, as well as poll worker training.

Election officials regularly verify voter registration information and remove ineligible voters from voter rolls. Some states use other databases, such as state motor vehicle data, to check voter information for citizenship. Since some databases can be outdated, the officials must be careful not to remove eligible voters from voter rolls, especially if an immigrant becomes a naturalized citizen. In Texas, a large number of eligible citizens were wrongly flagged for removal.

She said the numbers didn’t distinguish between an allegation that may be incorrect and a situation where a person has voted in bad faith.

Clapman said conservative-leaning groups lump all cases where the voter thought they were eligible together with cases of people intending to commit fraud.

Clapman said a lot of these cases involve people who at one point lost their voting rights due to a felony conviction. In Florida 20, formerly incarcerated people were arrested for illegal voting even though they were given voter registration cards, and in Texas there was a case involving a woman named Crystal Mason who thought she was eligible to vote.

Even if cases do go to court, they can be thrown out or face a hard path through the legal system. This often happens, Clapman said, in cases that involve ineligible voters who voted “accidentally in good faith, believing that they were eligible.”

Overall, Clapman said, there is a big gap between “the rhetoric and the actual reality” of how many instances of voter fraud some state officials identify and refer for prosecution.

The Brennan Center for Justice, which promotes voting rights, surveyed local election officials and found that out of a total of 23.5 million votes cast, just 30 cases of non-US citizens voting, and this was after the 2016 election.

In a statement, LaRose’s office said they had referred a total of 630 cases to prosecutors “over the course of multiple elections” — while also noting “voter fraud continues to be exceedingly rare” in the state.

“And the answer has overwhelmingly been throughout the years that this is extremely rare,” Clapman said. “Oftentimes courts, once they look at specific evidence, conclude that the evidence just isn’t there.”

Six facts about false noncitizen voting claims and the election: The case of North Carolina, Georgia, and the U.S.

That’s according to a new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. After years of Donald Trump questioning the legitimacy of the U.S. elections, Republicans are worried more than ever.

A state audit in North Carolina after the 2016 election found 41 cases of green card holders who voted out of their residency in the state. The same report said many of the noncitizen voters had been misinformed that they could vote.

In Georgia the Secretary of State launched an audit in 2022 that found that less than 1,700 people who might be non-Americans had attempted to register to vote. None were able to cast ballots.

After a federal trial last year over Arizona’s documentary proof of citizenship laws, the federal judge concluded, “though it may occur, non-citizens voting in Arizona is quite rare, and non-citizen voter fraud in Arizona is rarer still.”

The American Immigration Council, which advocates for immigrant rights, also analyzed the Heritage data and found most noncitizen voting cases involve legal immigrants and many had been incorrectly told they could vote. That analysis found only 10 cases involving undocumented immigrants since the 1980s. Heritage has said the database is just a sampling of fraud cases and is not comprehensive.

Nevertheless, Trump seized on and distorted Richman’s estimates to fuel false claims in 2016 that millions of noncitizens had illegally voted. Some 200 political scientists wrote an open letter rejecting a paper. The website Just Facts published a report in May based on discredited estimates from the paper. It was stated in the report that up to 25% of non-citizens are registered to vote, which led to a meme on X and congressional testimony.

Source: 6 facts about false noncitizen voting claims and the election

Why do noncitizens vote so badly in the U.S.? Commentary on the false narrative of Donald Trump and his allies

In some cases, noncitizens may vote in local elections such as city council or school board races. But so far, turnout has been low from this population. Noncitizens are still barred from voting in federal and state elections in all of these places, and there are systems in place to ensure they do not receive ballots for those other races.

One false narrative this campaign season suggests that the people who arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border during the Biden administration can quickly become citizens and vote legally. But the vast majority of migrants have no path to citizenship. For the minority who will ultimately be granted asylum, it often takes more than a decade from the time they enter the country to go through all the steps to win their cases and ultimately naturalize. Changes to asylum protocols during the Biden adminstration have made it harder to get into the country and become a citizen.

By focusing on baseless allegations of noncitizens voting in the election, Trump and his allies appear to be laying the groundwork for possibly contesting the election.

Voting rights advocates say these penalties have worked as effective deterrents. Sylvia Albert is the director of Voting and elections for Common Cause, and she said that anyone on a green card or trying to get citizenship in America would not be arrested or thrown out of the country.

It is against the law for non-U.S. citizens to vote in federal or state elections. Under penalty of perjury, the federal voter registration form asks people to say they are eligible citizens. Those who lie can be fined, imprisoned or deported. Noncitizens who register to vote can also lose the ability to ever become U.S. citizens.

Republicans have been repeating the false idea that Democrats are allowing migrants into the country so they will vote.