A report released this week by non-partisan research nonprofit Just Facts claims that between 1 and 2 million noncitizens could vote illegally in the 2024 presidential and congressional elections, based on data analysis from previous voting patterns.
The report was based in part on a 2014 peer-reviewed and verified study published in the journal Science Direct by Dr. Jesse Richman, which estimated that between 10 and 27 percent of noncitizens were registered to vote in the 2008 election, and that 6.4 percent of noncitizens actually voted.
Mr. Richman is an associate professor of Political Science and International Studies at Old Dominion University.
The 2014 study also asked noncitizens who said they voted about their preferences, with 82 percent of them saying they voted for Democrat Barack Obama in 2008, compared with 18 percent for Republican John McCain.
Taking this data from Mr. Richman’s study, Just Facts calculated that noncitizens gave President Joe Biden an additional 33,000 to 69,000 votes in Arizona in 2020.
President Biden won that state by less than 11,000 votes, which means that if these figures are accurate, noncitizen votes theoretically gave the state to President Biden.
Another study Just Facts published on Nov. 8, 2020, looked at all of the states where President Biden beat former President Donald Trump, and estimated that if noncitizen voting was eliminated, President Trump would have gained a total of 259 to 285 electoral votes instead of his final results of 232.
Since President Biden took office in 2021, millions more noncitizens have been released into the United States after illegally crossing the southern border. Based on these numbers and the conservative calculation in the report that half of registered noncitizens voted in the 2012 presidential election, Just Facts estimated that between 1 and 2.7 million noncitizens could vote in the 2024 election.
If they do vote, up to 82 percent of these noncitizens could vote Democrat, according to previous data. At the high end of the 2.7 million number, this could mean 2.2 million additional votes for President Joe Biden.
Just Facts does say that their numbers could have a substantial margin of error, but they provide wide ranges in order to cover those margins.
When any noncitizen casts a vote in any election, they cancel out the legal vote of a citizen and violate the U.S. Constitution.
It is illegal at the federal and state levels for noncitizens to vote, but Just Facts points out in its report that the federal form used for voter registration allows alternative forms of ID—like a bank statement or utility bill—to be used rather than requiring a social security number. There is no requirement to verify one’s citizenship on the federal form.
State requirements vary, but most states do not require any proof of identity either. Applicants are told to write “NONE” if they don’t have any identifying numbers, and one will be assigned to them by the Secretary of State.
The report also details widespread identity fraud among noncitizens, with the Social Security Administration admitting in 2013 that more than 2 million illegal immigrants had used “fraudulent birth certificates” or Social Security numbers “that did not match their name” to obtain work in the United States.
Around the same time that the Just Facts report was released, Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced that at least 137 noncitizen voters had been identified by the state’s Public Integrity Division and Office of Data Analytics and Archives, and would be removed from the voter rolls if they did not verify their citizenship status.
Mr. LaRose has also expanded efforts in the state to verify citizenship status and remove registered voters who are not citizens.
House Republicans, including Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), introduced a bill earlier this month to require people to provide proof of U.S. citizenship when they register to vote in federal elections.
The bill has 46 co-sponsors in the House, but will not pass without Democrat support in the Senate.