Noncitizen voting claims animate Trump's attacks on midterms and set up potential result challenges

The drumbeat by President Donald Trump and his allies about the perceived threats of voting by people who are not U.S. citizens is getting louder as the November election approaches.

He is pushing to have the U.S. Postal Service send mail ballots only to voters verified as U.S. citizens . The Census Bureau promoted a dubious report about thousands of noncitizens voting in 2020, an election that the Republican lost to Democrat Joe Biden . Trump's Department of Homeland Security is claiming without providing evidence that 250,000 noncitizens might be on the rolls in just four states.

This week, the Republican candidate for governor in Maine confirmed an audio recording in which he said he plans to ask Trump’s border czar to send U.S. marshals and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to polling places in the state to ensure that only legal voters are casting ballots.

Evidence of noncitizens voting is continuing to “pile up,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said when asked about the census report.

In fact, voting by noncitizens is extremely rare and is punishable as a felony that carries the potential for deportation. Even so, opponents say the hyperfocus on the issue by Trump and his allies is setting the stage for legal challenges to outcomes he may not like during the midterms in which control of Congress is on the line.

“Throw out these deceitful, deceptive claims as an excuse for disruptions,” said Alexandra Chandler, director of impact programs, free and fair elections at the nonpartisan Democracy Project. “You can deny the results later.”

The census report, which the president cited in a Truth Social post, said it found in a “beginning analysis” that 24,000 noncitizens voted illegally in 2020. It cited data from a commercially available voter file, which was checked against federal records.

Experts say the methodology might have created false positives . For example, if a person’s name was linked to the wrong address or someone's citizenship status had not been updated in a particular database.

Details that typically would be included in such a report about error rates were missing, said Justin Levitt, a Loyola Marymount University law professor. Nevertheless, election experts say it could help generate distrust among certain voters during this year’s general election.

“This is an empty manila folder that the administration will wave around when it says the elections were fraudulent, noncitizens voted,” Levitt said.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin's July letter to California, Nevada, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, alleging that as many as nearly 250,000 noncitizens were registered in those states, was met with skepticism and requests for more information.

“I have serious doubts about the reliability of your data and accuracy of your claims, since my office has not shared our statewide voter registration list with DHS or any other federal agency or official,” California's secretary of state, Democrat Shirley Weber, said in response.

In New Jersey, Mullin's department indicated as many as 35,000 noncitizens were registered. Shortly after the letter, the Democratic-controlled state disclosed that about 6,600 noncitizens were improperly registered through its motor vehicle system in 2023 and 2024.

Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill said those people answered “no” when asked whether they were citizens, but were registered anyway. The governor said her administration found that “fewer than 400” of them had voted and that it has begun replacing the vendor involved in the improper registrations.

Pennsylvania's secretary of the commonwealth, Republican Al Schmidt, said in a letter this week that DHS officials acknowledged during a recent meeting they did not have high confidence that the 14,576 people referenced in the initial letter were in fact noncitizens improperly registered to vote. He said federal officials said they would provide a methodology and that Pennsylvania officials were awaiting that information.

Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar, a Democrat, said he did not understand the methodology the federal government used.

“All I can say is we have done significant work to make sure our voter rolls are as clean as possible,” he said.

Messages from The Associated Press seeking comment from DHS were not immediately returned.

The relentless attention on claims that noncitizens are marring elections in the United States comes as Trump continues to pressure Republican senators to pass a bill that would require people to show documented proof of American citizenship when they register to vote for the midterms, even though millions of people do not have ready access to such records.

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE America Act, has passed the GOP-led House but is stalled in the Senate, where even some members of the president's party are skeptical of its provisions.

Kathy Boockvar, former Democratic secretary of state of Pennsylvania who now runs a nonpartisan election security firm, said she viewed the administration's release of the census report as part of a “doing everything it can” strategy to pass the legislation.

Republican supporters say the bill would improve the integrity of elections, including the requirement to show a photo ID. Gathering the documents necessary to prove citizenship would be difficult for many would-be voters. A 2025 University of Maryland study estimates that 21.3 million people in the U.S. who are eligible to vote do not have, or do not have easy access to, documents proving their citizenship.

Trump's opponents say his raising the specter of noncitizens voting leading to fraudulent results is less about maintaining the integrity of elections than it is about him doing whatever he can so his party retains power in Washington after November.

On Friday, the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles used the arrest of a Honduran national on charges alleging he fraudulently registered to vote as a signal that more attention on the issue was coming for California, a state that has a handful of important U.S. House races in November. Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said the arrest was “the first of many to come” while warning “there’s no telling how many noncitizens are currently registered to vote” in the state.

“Trump is trying to lay the groundwork to reject the ’26 election,” said Colorado's secretary of state, Democrat Jena Griswold. “He’s trying to destabilize both confidence and actual election administration. His efforts to destabilize election information, administration are not working.”