Can illegal immigrants really vote in US elections?

Donald Trump and his Republican allies have repeatedly claimed that the Democratic Party is planning to entice illegal immigrants to vote in the US election.

“Our election is so bad and a lot of illegal immigrants are here, they’re trying to convince them to vote,” Trump said during the presidential debate with Kamala Harris.

BBC Verify has identified more than 100 paid ads on Facebook and Instagram posted by Republicans since the beginning of September, focusing on this issue.

It is illegal for a non-US citizen to vote in a national election, but studies show that cases where this actually happens are rare.

the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 prohibits non-citizens – including illegal immigrants – from voting in federal elections.

Penalties include one year in prison, fines and possible deportation.

Every state is It is mandatory to use a common registration form that requires people to confirm they are U.S. citizens, under penalty of perjury, but does not require documentary evidence.

“The first step of checking the box saying you are a citizen to register to vote is a huge deterrent,” said Jasleen Singh, a voting expert at the liberal think tank Brennan. big for illegal immigrants, because lying is extremely dangerous.” Justice Center.

In many states, voter rolls are cross-referenced with citizenship and immigration services, death certificates, and postal records to ensure that people who are not citizens, have died, or live out of state are not registered to vote.

“At polling stations, there is a list of eligible voters and if a non-citizen shows up, they will be turned away or asked to vote provisionally,” said the professor. This ballot will only be accepted if they can provide proof of citizenship.” Ronald Hayduk, voting rights expert at San Francisco State University.

Non-citizens are also not allowed to vote in statewide elections.

However, some cities in California, Maryland, Vermont, and Washington DC allow them to vote in certain local elections, such as school board elections.

Several studies, both from conservative and left-wing organizations, show that it is rare for illegal immigrants to vote in US federal elections.

One by the Brennan Center for Justice interviewed 44 election officials who worked across 12 states during the 2016 election.

It found that out of 23.5 million votes counted in these states, An estimated 30 incidents of suspected non-citizen voting were referred for further investigation.

That’s about 0.0001% of the total vote.

An analysis of one database that collects cases of election fraud between 1999 and 2023 by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group, found 77 cases of non-citizens voting.

Several other reports, including that of the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank, are titled ‘Non-citizens Do not vote illegally in detectable numbers‘, came to the same conclusion.

“According to multiple sources of evidence, the number of non-citizens who vote in elections,” said Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who has written several reports on voter fraud, is very small”.

“It’s not zero, some people have slipped through the cracks for various reasons, but it’s not to the point where it can impact the outcome of an election.”

The Securing the Eligibility of American Voters (SAVE) Act, a Republican proposal that would have required people to prove their citizenship when registering to vote, was rejected by the House.

Republican lawmakers continue to push for more civil rights requirements.

“We have a number of states that have done audits of their voter rolls and found thousands of non-citizens,” House Republican leader Mike Johnson told CNN.

He highlighted Ohio, Pennsylvania and Georgia – three states where polls show a tight race between Trump and Kamala Harris.

In Ohio, a review called for by Republican officials in the statefound that of approximately eight million registered voters, 597 cases were referred for “further review and possible prosecution” of non-citizens registered to vote.

In Pennsylvania, a glitch with an electronic touch screen at the state’s driver’s license center incorrectly showed non-citizens the option to register to vote while receiving a new license or update.

This glitch occurred in the system from 2006 to 2017 and has since been resolved.

2017, Pennsylvania election officials said Non-citizen immigrants may have illegally voted 544 of the more than 93 million votes cast in elections since 2000.

In Georgia, review of the electoral roll in 2022 found 1,634 people “attempted to register to vote” but “could not be verified,” out of about seven million registered voters.

“Voter fraud and voting by illegal immigrants are so rare that this myth is intended to sow doubt about election integrity and create grounds to cast doubt on the election results,” Ms. Singh argued. Nominated”.

BBC Verify has identified 118 paid ads posted on Facebook and Instagram since September 1 by Republican candidates or Republican political groups claiming that non-citizens have widespread voter registration or raise questions about whether non-citizens should be allowed to vote in elections.

The ads we identified were shown between 7.8 and 9 million times on the platform.

One — which has more than 2.4 million views — invited users to participate in a poll asking: “Should illegal immigrants be allowed to vote?”

Another ad posted by congresswoman Ann Wagner, with more than 900,000 views, invited users to answer the same question.

Additional reporting by Maryam Ahmed.