Pushing Back on False Claims of Noncitizen Voting

Over the last few months, the Trump campaign has been pushing the lie that noncitizens are voting in an attempt to undermine the Presidential election. Some states like Virginia and Alabama have even purged their voter rolls of thousands by claiming they’re noncitizens to further validate these claims. But investigations by journalists have found hundreds of US citizens have been caught up in these purges.

Widespread noncitizen voting is a baseless conspiracy theory being pushed by many on the right to sow doubt in preparation for challenging the results if Trump loses, and it’s imperative that we push back on these lies and reinforce faith in our elections. Here are some talking points for the coming weeks:

• Our elections are secure and noncitizen voting is extremely rare. A recent Republican audit of Georgia’s voter rolls of 8.2 million people found just nine noncitizens who had voted.
• It’s illegal for noncitizens to vote. They could face prison time or even deportation for doing so. People risk a lot when they leave their home and immigrate to the United States, and few would choose to throw all of that away to cast one vote.
• Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans are pushing this conspiracy theory so they can claim once again that the election was stolen from Donald Trump. Their refusal to accept the results of the election threatens our democracy and is one of the many reasons voters have lost faith in them.

Republicans have pushed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act as the answer to the noncitizen voting problem. Here are reasons to oppose the SAVE Act:

• Republicans introduced the SAVE Act so they could push their noncitizen voting conspiracy. The truth is it’s already illegal for noncitizens to vote, and that’s why there’s no evidence that noncitizen voting has had an impact on any election in American history.
• The SAVE Act would have required Americans to provide documented proof of citizenship when they register to vote—creating barriers especially for low-income and rural citizens across our country to exercise their voting rights.
• More than 20 million Americans don’t have easy access to proof of citizenship. The SAVE Act would’ve had one impact: making it harder for US citizens to vote. We should be making it easier for our fellow Americans to exercise their constitutional rights, not harder.