February 13, 2017
Cross-posted from TIME.
The Trump administration continues to double down on its false and widely-criticized assertion that 3 to 5 million non-citizens illegally voted in the 2016 election.
On Sunday, White House Senior Advisor Stephen Miller claimed 14% of non-citizens are registered to vote. “We know for a fact, you have massive numbers of non-citizens registered to vote in this country,” he said, appearing on ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos. “The White House has provided enormous evidence with respect to voter fraud.”
Actually, it hasn’t. Nevertheless, President Trump announced earlier this month, despite the lack of evidence, that Vice President Mike Pence will lead a federal investigation into voter fraud.
Tons of ink has been devoted to debunking the president’s claims that our elections are marred by widespread voter fraud. But few have focused specifically on his administration’s larger false claims about non-citizens. It is important to put this particular allegation to bed once and for all.
Like voter fraud generally, non-citizen voting is incredibly rare. Simply put, we already know that ineligible non-citizens do not vote in American elections — including the 2016 election — except at negligible rates. Here are the facts.
Non-citizen voting is very rare.
Multiple nationwide studies have uncovered only a handful of incidents of non-citizens voting. Based on state prosecution records, votes by non-citizens account for between 0.0003 percent and 0.001 percent of all votes cast. Election officials agree that there is no serious problem of non-citizen voting in our elections. The National Association of Secretaries of State, whose Republican-majority membership includes the chief elections officers of 40 states, said they “are not aware of any evidence that supports the voter fraud claims made by President Trump.”
Federal law and the law of every state prohibit non-citizens from registering to vote or voting in elections (save for a few municipalities that allow non-citizen residents to vote in local elections). Experts believe that the severity of the penalties for violating these laws serve as a significant deterrent.
Also, it is relatively easy for a non-citizen to get caught. If an ineligible person intentionally registers or votes, not only do they risk being recognized, but their name will be on permanent lists of voters for later detection. And, as discussed below, lots of people scrutinize those lists looking for potentially ineligible voters, increasing the chances of getting caught. Again, when discovered, non-citizens face fines, time in prison, and deportation.
Perhaps because of the increased penalties non-citizens face from criminal prosecution, research also shows that non-citizens commit crimes at lower rates than persons born in the United States. Undocumented immigrants or persons with undocumented immigrants in their family are often more reluctant to engage with government officials generally, which would include registering to vote and voting.
Penalties for a non-citizen voting or registering to vote are severe.
Under federal law, any non-citizen that votes can be fined up to $100,000 and imprisoned for up to one year or three years if they intentionally misrepresented their citizenship status. States have their own equally harsh penalties. In one recent high-profile example, a permanent resident in Texas was sentenced to eight years in prison for voting.
Even more serious, a non-citizen can be deported for casting a single vote they were not eligible to cast. For non-citizens working towards naturalization, merely being registered to vote can serve as a basis for denying citizenship.
Read more
https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/actual-true-and-provable-facts-about-non-citizen-voting
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