In case of loss, Republicans prepare to blame noncitizens voting ? which is incredibly rare

Leading Republicans have signaled that if former President Donald Trump loses they will claim noncitizens voted illegally in large enough numbers to affect the outcome ? despite lacking evidence that it has happened.

Trump said it in the Sept. 10 debate, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., threatened to shut down the government over a bill to address it and Republicans are homing in on it at the state level.

“We are in an era of razor-thin election margins," Johnson said at a Sept. 10 press conference. “If you have a few thousand illegals participate in an election in the wrong place, you can change the makeup of Congress, and you can affect the presidential election."

Data shows noncitizen voting is virtually nonexistent. A study by the Brennan Center for Justice, a democracy and civil rights watch dog, found that in 2016 officials raised concerns about 30 votes from possible noncitizens out of 23.5 million votes cast in 42 jurisdictions. That accounts for 0.0001% of the vote. The conservative Heritage Foundation’s analysis of legal actions regarding election conduct found only 25 instances of noncitizens voting between 2003 and 2023.

Nonetheless, Republican governors and officials who run elections in several states are keeping the topic front and center. For example, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, is requiring polling places to post a sign in English and Spanish warning noncitizens that it is illegal to vote.

In what they say is an effort to prevent illegal voting, conservative legal groups are bringing lawsuits against state election officials demanding removal of people they suspect are not citizens ? which would violate federal law that prohibits voter roll purges so close to Election Day.

Voting rights experts say Republicans are hyping up the issue now to sow doubt about the election results if they lose.

"The fact that we are hearing this so loudly from so many different corners tells me that it's part of a concerted strategy that they think could be successful in shaping attitudes towards the election this fall,” said Jess Marsden, legal counsel for Protect Democracy, a nonprofit that works to counter authoritarianism.

"It's clear that this is a coordinated political messaging campaign aimed at undermining our election system and seeding the ground for challenges to the election result if they don't turn out their way," said Jonathan Diaz, director of voting advocacy at the Campaign Legal Center, a pro-democracy group. "I don't think it's a coincidence that this story has picked up steam now as the election approaches."

'They're trying to get them to vote'

For years, Trump has said without evidence that immigrants are being allowed into the country illegally to vote for Democrats and that local election officials are turning a blind eye.

Trump claimed during the presidential debate this month that, "They can't even speak English. They don't even know what country they're in, practically. And these people are trying to get them to vote, and that's why they're allowing them into our country."

The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

In Congress, Johnson threatened to shut down the government unless Democrats attached to a must-pass funding bill called a continuing resolution a bill called the SAVE Act, which bans noncitizens from voting and requires people to confirm their citizenship before voting.

The legislation would not have taken effect before the 2024 election and federal law already prohibits noncitizens from voting. The House Republican majority passed the SAVE Act in July, after Johnson first raised the idea of passing a bill during an April press conference at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, but the Democratic-controlled Senate has not considered it.

Trump publicly demanded Republicans to shut down the government unless Democrats capitulated to attaching it to the spending bill, but congressional leaders have now agreed on a deal to fund the government through Dec. 20 without including the SAVE Act.

Johnson's staff referred USA TODAY to his public comments on the bill.

Democrats say the very small number of documented cases of noncitizens voting shows that the current system already works and that the proof-of-citizenship requirement would make it harder for all Americans to vote. Many people are unable to easily provide the citizenship-proving documents like a passport. Driver licenses in many states do not prove citizenship and married women could have a problem if their current name doesn't match the one their birth certificate.

Most voting rights experts say there is no evidence to back up Trump and Johnson's claims that noncitizens are voting in large numbers.

"We know that noncitizen registration is virtually nonexistent, and the problem of noncitizen voting is, for all intents and purposes, nonexistent," said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research.

Heritage Foundation election law initiative manager Hans Von Spakovsky disagreed, saying that the numbers are so low because many election integrity watchers rely on data counting the number of convictions, not on the number of noncitizens found on the rolls. He said his research has found that local prosecutors and the Justice Department are often reluctant to prosecute noncitizens found on the voter rolls.

"They say, 'oh, there's only been a small number of convictions of aliens for doing this.' But what they miss is that even when election officials find aliens on the rolls, almost none of these cases get investigated or prosecuted," Spakovsky said.

Republicans, including Johnson, have said even a small number of noncitizen voters is too many, and Spakovsky agreed.

"Could that make a difference in the presidential election? Maybe not, but congressional races, state legislative races, town council races, county commission races are often decided by an extremely small number," he said.

State officials highlight noncitizen voting

Citing the growth of the state's noncitizen population, Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas has set up a special email account to report suspected violations of election laws.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, recently signed an executive order requiring state agencies that provide voter registration forms to include a written disclaimer that noncitizens are prohibited from voting.

In New Hampshire, Republican Gov. Chris Sununu signed a law earlier this month requiring evidence of citizenship when registering to vote and photo identification at the ballot box. The law won't take effect until after November's general election.

Citing slightly higher numbers from his state than those in the national studies, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, told a congressional panel last week that enforcement is necessary to keep noncitizen voting rare. He said his office recently identified nearly 600 noncitizens in state voter rolls that contain about 8 million registrants.

"We found 135 this year that had voted. We found another 400 that were registered but hadn't yet voted. And this idea that it's already illegal? It's illegal to hijack airplanes, but we don't get rid of the TSA," LaRose said.

Mass voter roll purges are unlikely at this point. Federal law prohibits large-scale changes to voter rolls within 90 days of the election. Individual changes can be made, for example someone convicted of a felony this month can be removed from the roles before Election Day.

More: Georgia's election board passed a controversial hand-count rule: Here's what to know

'Why now?'

It is already a crime to register or vote as a noncitizen in state and federal elections. Violating the 1996 federal law comes with a potential punishment of a fine, up to a year in prison and possible deportation. Although many jurisdictions don't require proof of citizenship in order to register, both registering to vote and casting a ballot leave a paper trail that elected officials are legally required to routinely review. In most states, the names of people who are registered and vote are public, allowing for additional scrutiny.

In recent weeks, the Attorney General of Texas and the Secretary of State of Alabama have announced that they've identified thousands of potential noncitizens on their voter registration rolls.

But Diaz said historically upon closer inspection, many of those potential noncitizens turn out to be recently naturalized citizens, who when flagged by state officials are given a limited amount of time to prove their right to vote by bringing documents to election offices.

“It's basically putting a target on people's backs for being immigrants who are legally present at the United States, who have gone through the process to become U.S. citizens, and who are legally eligible to vote just to score cheap vulnerable points at the expense of vulnerable communities,” Diaz said.

“The even more insidious problem here is that many of these officials know that it's too late to be doing any of this list maintenance,” Diaz said.

“They could have done this over the summer, when we were outside of that 90 day window, but they waited until after that 90 day period began so that they could make all these claims and then point the finger at election officials and the federal government saying, 'Look, we told them about all these illegal voters. They didn't do anything about it. The election is illegitimate, and that's why you can't trust the results,'" Diaz said.

Becker said it's important to question if this is so pressing why they are raising the issue now, when it is too late to deal with it, rather than while Trump was in the White House, or while Republicans have held control of the House in the last two years.

"Ask: why now? And the answer you're going to find is because they want fuel in a post-election world in which their candidate lost to incite anger and violence and donations, and that's very dangerous,” he said.

More: Democrats propose voting rights bill to counter Georgia's election changes and others

Lawsuits already in court

The Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee, Trump allies and Republican state attorneys general have brought at least eight lawsuits challenging voter registration procedures in four of the seven swing states expected to decide the election contest, including a wide-ranging challenge to the citizenship status of Arizona voters.

The Arizona lawsuit filed by Trump-aligned advocacy group America First Legal seeks to force counties to investigate about 42,000 voters -- about 1% of the statewide total -- who were allowed to register without providing proof of citizenship. Many were registered to vote before state law changed to require them to prove citizenship.

Arizona requires proof of U.S. citizenship to vote in state elections, but does not mandate it in federal elections.

Marsden said the cacophony of claims from officials and Republican supporting groups is creating a "surround sound" effect. They must think it resonates with conservative voters as a reason the results cannot be trusted, she said.

"When I look ahead to the fall, I fully expect we will be hearing these lies about immigrants and voting from local officials who are threatening not to certify local election results that they don't like,” she said.

Voters in eight states will even have the issue on their ballots in the form of proposed constitutional amendments declaring that only citizens can vote.

Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wisconsin voters will weigh amendments approved by their Republican-controlled legislatures to replace existing constitutional provisions stating that “every” citizen or “all” citizens can vote with wording that “only” citizens can vote. In Idaho and Kentucky, the proposed amendments explicitly state: “No person who is not a citizen of the United States” can vote.

Brad Raffensperger is Georgia Secretary of State. A previous version used the wrong title

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Noncitizen voting growing concern to GOP... but there's no evidence