Trump falls back on false claim that non-citizen voting threatened his popular vote, despite data proving that it’s a lie
Donald Trump and Mike Johnson are pushing for federal legislation to ban non-citizen voting, which could end up disenfranchising eligible citizens. The effort also underscores how Trump and allies are already seeding doubts about this fall’s election.
It is already illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections. But new legislation backed by Johnson would amend federal law to require all voters to show documentary proof of citizenship when registering to vote. Currently, Americans who register to vote with a federal voter registration form are required to affirm they are a citizen and risk prosecution if they lie.
“We all know – intuitively – that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections. But it’s not been something that is easily provable,” Johnson said on the steps of the US capitol on 8 May. He was joined by Cleta Mitchell, an ally of Trump who sought to overturn the 2020 election, and Stephen Miller, a top Trump adviser who has been behind some of Trump’s most anti-immigrant policies.
Put another way, there is a very strong incentive for undocumented people to be as law-abiding as possible.
Specific to this “illegals voting” nonsense, if there had been enough undocumented people voting in a presidential election to impact the outcome, some of them would have been caught.
So far as I am aware, there are zero cases of an undocumented person even attempting to vote. Anywhere, ever.