Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen’s claim that the Biden administration is making it easier for undocumented immigrants to vote was amplified Monday by a social media account popular with conservatives.
But experts say the claim, made in June, was boosted Monday by the X account Libs of TikTok, where it caught the attention of Elon Musk.
The Tesla CEO boosted that tweet and another hours later from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton claiming “Biden and the Democrats want illegal immigrants to vote in the election this November. Our elections are NOT safe from mass interference as long as states do not require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections.”
However, Allen’s claim isn’t backed by either the law or studies that show an infinitesimally small number of cases of suspected non-citizen voting, let alone actual cases of undocumented immigrants voting.
The foundation of Allen’s allegation is built on the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which requires state agencies through which people receive public assistance or state-funded programs, such as driver’s license offices and Medicaid, make voter registration forms accessible.
“We got some complaints from Alabama residents about their deceased relatives receiving a voter registration application in the mail from state Medicaid, which is federally funded,” Allen said during a June 21 appearance on WVNN’s The Yaffee Program.
“And so what we found as we dug deeper and went down the rabbit hole was anyone that came in contact with a state motor, state Medicaid agency, no matter if they received these benefits or not, received a voter registration form in the mail. And that means that any legal noncitizen or illegal alien, if they come into contact, if they try to get benefits from state Medicaid or DHR are receiving these voter registration forms.”
Allen claimed the NVRA coupled with a Biden executive order from March 2021 that the White House said “directs federal agencies to expand access to voter registration and election information” makes it easier for non-citizens to vote.
“You’re getting into some things that are appalling, and we are using every legal tool that we have in the secretary of state’s office to combat this, to make sure that we are operating under the Constitution and under our state laws,” Allen said.
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson has stoked similar fears about non-citizen voting voting in the upcoming election, Stateline recently reported.
“It could, if there are enough votes, affect the presidential election,” Johnson said as he stood with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. “We cannot wait for widespread fraud to occur, especially when the threat of fraud is growing with every single illegal immigrant that crosses that border.”
That rhetoric is rooted in a fear about how the U.S. is changing demographically, becoming more diverse as the non-white population increases, longtime Republican strategist Mike Madrid told Stateline.
“There’s no problem being solved here,” said Madrid, whose forthcoming book, “The Latino Century,” outlines the group’s growing voter participation. “This is all politics. It’s all about stoking fears and angering the base.”
It is already is it illegal for non-citizens to vote and non-citizens would increase their risk of deportation by attempting to vote, wrote Sean Morales-Doyle, director of voting rights and democracy for the Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal public policy institute.
“[B]y committing the crime, you create a government record of your having committed it. In fact, it’s the creation of the government record — the registration form or the ballot cast — that is the crime. So, you’ve not only exposed yourself to prison time and deportation, you’ve put yourself on the government’s radar, and you’ve handed the government the evidence it needs to put you in prison or deport you. All so you could cast one vote. Who would do such a thing?” Morales-Doyle wrote in April.
A Brennan Center study that looked at 42 jurisdictions in the 2016 election showed that only 30 incidents of suspected non-citizen voting were referred for further investigation out of 23.5 million votes. Those 30 incidents were not necessarily proven.
“In other words, even suspected — not proven — noncitizen votes accounted for just 0.0001 percent of the votes cast,” Morales-Doyle wrote.
Even the CATO Institute, a libertarian think tank, found noncitizen voting was a nonissue in the 2020 election.
“There are likely many problems with America’s voting system and there is no doubt that a non-zero number of non-citizens illegally voted, but there is no good evidence that noncitizens voted illegally in large enough numbers to actually shift the outcome of elections or even change the number of electoral votes,” wrote Alex Nowrasteh in a piece titled “Noncitizens Don’t Illegally Vote in Detectable Numbers.”
In voicing its disapproval for the Safeguard American Voting Eligibility (SAVE) Act, legislation championed by Johnson and other House Republicans that they say would prevent noncitizens from voting, the White House said the law and other “effective safeguards” are already in place to stop those occurences.
“It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections—it is a federal crime punishable by prison and fines. The alleged justification for this bill is based on easily disproven falsehoods,” the White House said. Additionally, making a false claim of citizenship or unlawfully voting in an election is punishable by removal from the United States and a permanent bar to admission. States already have effective safeguards in place to verify voters’ eligibility and maintain the accuracy of voter rolls.
Allen’s response to the argument that noncitizen voting is already illegal was that “we want the most accurate, most clean voter files in the country in the state of Alabama.
“That’s what we want and non-citizens should not be receiving a voter registration at all. That’s a full stop there. And what the Biden administration should not be doing is making it easier for non-citizens, whether they be legal non-citizens in the country legally or illegal aliens, they don’t need to be making it easier for those individuals to receive the voter registration form to even have a chance to slip through the cracks. It’s really just a slap in the face to the American people to the Alabama taxpayers,” he said.
“They’re making a mockery of law and order,” Allen said of Democrats. “And we’re here, bringing this to light. And what we’ve got to do is put Trump back in the White House, get a GOP Senate and a GOP House to reform the NVRA to where we can verify citizenship and to make sure that none of these illegal aliens and none of these non-US citizens are receiving voter registration forms.”
Morales-Doyle said there are other obstacles preventing noncitizens from voting.
“Again, consider the fact that in order to commit these crimes you create a government record of having committed them. Indeed, anyone can look up your voter history on public voter files. And election officials conduct regular maintenance of these voter lists — in fact, they’re required to by federal law,” he wrote. “Moreover, these are crimes that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officers are instructed to look into during the naturalization process. So, if you ever try to become a citizen, you’ll be caught.”
