Trump Noncitizen Voting Claims Fuel Midterm Election Fears
President Donald Trump and his allies are intensifying claims about noncitizen voting ahead of November’s midterm elections, a drumbeat that election officials and experts say is setting the stage for potential challenges to results and raising concerns about the integrity of the democratic process.
According to AP News, the administration is pushing to have the U.S. Postal Service send mail ballots only to voters verified as U.S. citizens, while the Census Bureau has promoted a disputed report about thousands of noncitizens voting in 2020 — an election Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden by more than 7 million votes.
The Census Bureau Report Controversy
The Census Bureau published a seven-page report on Aug. 18 claiming that more than 24,000 noncitizens voted in the 2020 presidential election. Trump cited the report on Truth Social, saying it “proves” widespread illegal voting. But experts say the unauthored report lacks the rigor expected of the nation’s premier statistical agency.
“This is the weakest methodology description I’ve ever seen in a Census Bureau publication,” Mark Lindeman, policy and strategy director at Verified Voting, told AP News. “This document doesn’t tell us anything about elections. It just shows that the Census Bureau has gone off the rails.”
NPR reported that the analysis was not conducted by career civil servants at the bureau and that the team behind it included individuals affiliated with the America First Policy Institute, a think tank started by officials from Trump’s first administration. The report used data from Data-Clear, a commercial voter file provider, but lacked details on error rates or matching methodology.
Justin Levitt, a Loyola Marymount University law professor, described the report as “an empty manila folder that the administration will wave around when it says the elections were fraudulent, noncitizens voted,” according to Votebeat.
Even if the report’s numbers were accurate, the 24,000 alleged noncitizen votes represent just 0.018% of the records reviewed — far too few to change the outcome of any state in 2020.
DHS Claims Questioned by States
In July, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin sent letters to California, Nevada, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania claiming that as many as 250,000 noncitizens might be registered to vote in those states. But Votebeat’s investigation found that the actual matched numbers were far lower — approximately 118,000 across all four states — and that even those figures are disputed.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber responded: “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.”
Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar called the DHS numbers “wildly speculative,” while Pennsylvania’s Republican Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt said DHS officials acknowledged they did not have high confidence in their figures, as NPR reported.
New Jersey Software Glitch
Amid the federal claims, New Jersey disclosed that a software glitch in its motor vehicle system led to 6,600 noncitizens being improperly registered to vote in 2023 and 2024. Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill said fewer than 400 of them actually voted and that she has ordered an investigation. “Do I think that the latest round that he has put out is in some way an attempt to undermine our elections in this country? Yes I do,” Sherrill said.
ICE at Polling Places Proposal
This week, Maine’s Republican gubernatorial nominee Bobby Charles confirmed an audio recording in which he said he plans to ask Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, to send U.S. Marshals and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to polling places in the state. According to AP News, Charles told supporters at an Aug. 20 event: “I’m going to make an appeal for ICE and Marshals to be at our voting booths.”
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, said the proposal is prohibited by law. “The political rhetoric coming from Mr. Charles is just politics, but it won’t change the laws or the Constitution,” Bellows said, as reported by the Portland Press Herald.
Federal law prohibits military and federal agencies from placing armed officers near polling sites, and DHS officials have previously said they have no plans to send ICE agents to polling places.
Arrest in Los Angeles
On Aug. 28, federal authorities arrested Darwin Jonathan Rivera Flores, a 30-year-old Honduran national, on charges of fraudulently registering to vote in Los Angeles. According to MyNewsLA, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli called the arrest “the first of many to come,” warning that “there’s no telling how many noncitizens are currently registered to vote” in California. Rivera had not voted in any election.
Supreme Court and Mail Voting
The Supreme Court on Aug. 25 gave preliminary approval for Trump’s mail voting executive order, which would require new envelope formats and an electronic voter identification system. But Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned in her dissent that the decision “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections,” as AP News reported. A federal judge subsequently barred implementation of the order again on Aug. 28, and experts say it would be impossible for states to comply by November.
The SAVE America Act
Trump continues to pressure Republican senators to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote. The bill has passed the House but is stalled in the Senate. A 2025 University of Maryland study estimates that 21.3 million eligible voters lack easy access to citizenship documents.
Analysis: Setting the Stage for Challenges
Election experts and officials say the relentless focus on noncitizen voting is less about election integrity than about laying groundwork to challenge results. “Trump is trying to lay the groundwork to reject the ‘26 election,” said Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold. “He’s trying to destabilize both confidence and actual election administration.”
Alexandra Chandler of the Democracy Project put it more bluntly: “Throw out these deceitful, deceptive claims as an excuse for disruptions. You can deny the results later.”
Voting by noncitizens is extremely rare and punishable as a felony with deportation as a potential penalty. Studies and audits across the country have consistently found that noncitizen voting occurs at negligible rates.
What to Watch For
The first ballots are set to go out to North Carolina’s overseas and military voters on Sept. 4, with the November midterms looming. The legal battles over Trump’s mail voting order, the SAVE Act’s fate in the Senate, and whether the administration releases more disputed data on noncitizen voting will all shape the election landscape in the coming weeks. The question now is whether these claims will translate into actual challenges to election results — and what that could mean for American democracy.