Democrats deny non-citizens are voting in federal elections while Republicans seek to prevent it

Democrats claim that non-citizen voting doesn’t occur while Republicans and most states are trying to ensure that only U.S. citizens vote in elections. 

As states are adopting constitutional amendments to prevent non-citizens from voting and Republicans are raising the alarm about the issue as more evidence has been presented, Democrats insist that it is not a concern because non-citizens are not voting in U.S. elections. 

Democrats on the House Administration Committee claimed during a hearing titled, “American Confidence in Elections: Preventing Noncitizen Voting and Other Foreign Interference,” on Thursday that the discussion of non-citizen voting is an attempt by Republicans to undermine the results of the 2024 election. 

Rep. Joe Morelle, D-N.Y., said flatly at the hearing that non-citizens are not voting in U.S. elections, and that Republicans are using the “non-issue” to explain why former President Donald Trump will lose the 2024 presidential election. 

“This hearing is about preemptively covering Donald Trump’s lies,” Morelle said. “The hearing isn’t about law and order. It's about laying the foundation for the next big lie. It’s about saying that illegal voting is the cause of an election defeat.” 

During the hearing, Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., introduced into evidence an opinion article by Morelle published on Thursday, in which he wrote, "independent sources have repeatedly debunked this myth, verifying that noncitizens voting in federal elections is extraordinarily rare and has never been shown to impact the outcome of any election." 

However, according to a study by Just Facts, 10% to 27% of non-citizens are registered to vote in the U.S., and about half of them – 5% to 13% – “will illegally vote in the 2024 presidential and congressional elections.” 

The 2022 U.S. Census recorded 19.7 million non-citizens of voting age in the country. This does not include non-citizens who didn’t participate in the census or falsely claimed to be a citizen, Just Facts noted. 

Based on that information, about one to 2.7 million non-citizens will illegally vote in the 2024 U.S. elections, according to Just Facts. 

More non-citizens have entered the country since the census, and Steil said Thursday that since Biden took office in 2021 “over 7 million illegal immigrants have crossed the Southern Border.” 

While non-citizens are prohibited from voting in federal, state, and most local elections, California, Maryland, and Vermont three states and Washington, D.C., allow non-citizens to vote in local elections.

Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, North Dakota, and Ohio have all included language in their state constitutions that prohibits non-citizen voting. Meanwhile, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina, and Wisconsin all have ballot measures for voters to decide this year whether non-citizens should be prohibited from voting in state elections. 

In March, a federal judge dismissed a legal challenge to a 2022 Washington, D.C., law permitting non-citizens to vote in local elections. 

House Administration Committee Bryan Steil, R-Wis., told the “John Solomon Reports” podcast on Wednesday that Washington, D.C., is the Democrats’ “petri dish” for getting “non-citizens to vote in our elections.” 

He explained that postcards are being sent to get “non-citizens to participate in the upcoming Washington, D.C., elections.” 

“This is what the left wants to do. They're using Washington, D.C. — a Democratic-run city — as their petri dish to simply try to get non-citizens to vote in our elections,” Steil said. "What I'm working to do is to prevent non-citizens from voting in our elections, to say that U.S. elections should be for U.S. citizens." 

“We've seen the Democrats test out their model here in our nation's capital,” he added, and “non-citizens on the voter rolls in states like Pennsylvania, states like Ohio.” 

“Now is the time to act to make sure that we're preventing non-citizens from voting, in particular, in this upcoming presidential election in November,” Steil continued. 

During the House Administration Committee hearing on Thursday, Steil said that 500 non-citizens are registered to vote in Washington, D.C. 

J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), testified at the hearing, saying, “Non-citizens are, in fact, getting onto American voter rolls, and some of them are voting. The data show that most often noncitizens are getting on the rolls through the motor voter registration process or third-party registration drives.” 

“In 2024, it is no longer an open question whether foreign nationals are registering and voting,” Adams later said. “Anyone who would try to argue otherwise has not read the data. We have documented the problems.” 

Adams explained that non-citizens are often added to the voter rolls through the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, even when they admit they are not citizens. 

According to a PILF report from last May, Chicago records show that 394 foreign nationals were removed from the city’s voter rolls since 2007, with 20 of them recorded as casting 85 ballots. In April 2023, PILF reported that Maricopa County, Ariz., records showed that since 2015, 222 foreign nationals were removed from the county’s voter rolls, with nine of them recorded as casting 12 ballots across four federal elections.