Illegal voting by noncitizens in the United States occurs when noncitizens vote in elections they are not eligible to, such as federal elections.
Background
Noncitizens who vote illegally may face deportation, up to five years of incarceration or fines, as well as the jeopardizing of naturalization efforts.
While federal law does not prohibit noncitizens from voting in state or local elections, no state has allowed noncitizens to vote in statewide elections since Arkansas became the last state to outlaw noncitizen voting in state elections in 1926.
The federal form to register a voter requires a unique identification number such as a Social Security or driver's license number. New voters must check a box attesting that they are a citizen, though are not required to provide documentary proof of citizenship when registering. States typically have safeguards to prevent noncitizen voting, with voter registration and casting a ballot creating a paper trail. The extent to which states verify citizenship of voters differs.
When noncitizens are added to voter rolls, it is usually by mistake, as the result of a federal law that requires states to offer people voter registration when they visit a motor vehicle office. Unknowingly, noncitizens registered were mostly registered as Democrats in blue states, were on the voter rolls for years, and some even voted in prior elections according to documents obtained via public records request.Noncitizens on voter rolls in Democrat-run state exposed as RNC chair pledges secure elections Sometimes it also appears that more noncitizens are on voter rolls than there are because they became naturalized citizens but have not yet been back to the DMV to update their citizenship status in the DMV database.
According to Pew Research Center, there have been 187 instances since 1824 in which a state was decided by less than 2 percentage points of difference; very close races include: Joe Biden vs Donald Trump in 2020, decided by fewer than 125,000 votes George W. Bush vs Al Gore in 2000, decided by 537 votes Henry Clay vs Andrew Jackson in 1832, in which a state was decided by 4 votes.
As of 2023, there are 14 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States, 8 million of which are eligible for deportation.https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2025/08/21/u-s-unauthorized-immigrant-population-reached-a-record-14-million-in-2023/
Data
in 2008, 6.4% of noncitizens had voted, according to a research paper by Jesse Richman and David Earnest. The study was heavily criticized; 200 political scientists signed an open letter saying the study should not be cited or used in any debate on voter fraud. The study was misused by Donald Trump and others to justify false claims it was widespread.
Before the 2014 midterm elections in Florida, then-governor Rick Scott announced a purge of 180,000 suspected foreign nationals from voter rolls, though only 85 names were removed and only one person was prosecuted.
A study of 2016 data by Brennan Center for Justice from 42 jurisdictions found an estimated 30 incidents of suspected noncitizen voting out of 23.5 million votes cast (or .0001% of votes). In an audit of the 2016 elections, the North Carolina State Board of Elections found that 41 out of 4.8 million total votes were by noncitizens,.
In 2018, CNN reported that in the past three years, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach had convicted three noncitizens of voting out of 1.8 million voters.
Between 1997 and 2022, no potential noncitizens out of 1,634 flagged had been allowed to register to vote, as per a review in Georgia.
Between 2017 and 2024, only three such cases were referred for prosecution in North Carolina.
In 2024, the Heritage Foundation database included only 24 noncitizen voting cases from between 2003 and 2023. At the time, studies of voter rolls have found very few noncitizen voters.
In 2024, several Republican-led states have flagged and removed purported noncitizens from voter rolls ranging in the hundreds or thousands. These figures have been criticized by voting rights organizations as partisan and erroneously including legal voters, particularly naturalized citizens.
In September 2024, an audit in Oregon found that more than 1,200 possible noncitizens had been added to the state's voter rolls by mistake; the issue was quickly fixed and no more than 5 noncitizens had cast ballots.
In July 2026, an audit in New Jersey found around 6,600 noncitizens had wrongly been registered to vote in 2023 and 2024 due to a software error, and that almost 400 had illegally voted. In the same month, a state audit in Alaska found 3,500 possible noncitizens in voter rolls.
Claims Statements by journalists According to The Guardian, CNN, AP News, and other major media, illegal voting by noncitizens is extremely rare.
In 2024, Glenn Kessler in The Washington Post stated there was "scattered evidence" of noncitizen voting and little to support the idea that it ever affected the outcome of a major election, but that the scarcity of evidence "does not necessarily prove that the phenomenon does not happen". He wrote that "if a noncitizen casts a ballot, there is no obvious victim to make a complaint and little public documentation to prove that a voter is not a citizen".
Statements by politicians Some prominent Republicans such as House Speaker Mike Johnson have argued that widespread noncitizen voting is a threat, though such claims have been largely unsupported by evidence. At a May 8, 2024, press conference in which Johnson demanded that Congress pass an "election integrity" bill to stop noncitizens from voting, reporters pressed him on the lack of evidence. Johnson replied, "We all know intuitively that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections, but it's not been something that is easily provable."
Statements by think tanks In 2020 and 2024, the libertarian Cato Institute said that there was no detectable amount of noncitizen voting, and that noncitizens who can vote in the few local elections where it is legal rarely cast ballots.
In June 2026, the Center for Election Innovation and Research released a study titled Claims of Noncitizen Registration or Voting: Analysis and Tracker. This study found that claims alleging large numbers of possible noncitizens on voter registration rolls are based on flags from preliminary reviews, before any proper investigation or scrutiny. Following deeper investigation, many claims were found to be based on incorrect information.
Statements by scholars Legal scholar Richard Hasen, who had previously viewed noncitizen voting as a small problem, said in 2020 that claims of noncitizen voting "evaporated in the sunlight of public inspection and legal examination." He also said "spurious claims more likely serve as a pretext for passing laws aimed at making it harder for people likely to vote for Democrats to register and vote."
In 2024, San Francisco State University professor and noncitizen voting expert Ron Hayduk referred to noncitizen voting as a "problem that doesn't exist".
See also Non-citizen suffrage in the United States Electoral fraud in the United States List of close election results
References