Why Republicans Are Lying About Voting By Noncitizens

The lie intimidates legitimate voters and sets the stage for Trump to deny the results of the presidential election.

In the final days of the 2024 election, Republicans are hammering home the lie that there is widespread voting by noncitizens.

“Our elections are bad, and a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote,” former President Donald Trump said during the September presidential debate with his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris. “They can’t even speak English. They don’t even know what country they’re in practically. And these people are trying to get them to vote. And that’s why they’re allowing them to come into our country.”

On one level, Trump is once again vilifying immigrants and echoing the white nationalist Great Replacement conspiracy theory that asserts the left is trying to “import” voters to take the place of white Americans. But behind the lie is a widespread attempt to purge thousands of people, including U.S. citizens, from voter rolls. In the event Trump loses the election, this lie will likely undergird his all-but-assured campaign to declare the result rigged.

Republicans have raised the prospect of noncitizens voting for years. Trump infamously said he would have won the popular vote in 2016 but for “millions of people who voted illegally” ― a false claim for which neither Trump nor the man who started the lie, right-wing activist Gregg Phillips of the conspiracy theory group True the Vote, ever provided any evidence. As president, Trump created a shady Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity meant to investigate his false claim that millions had voted illegally. The commission shut down in 2018 without publishing any evidence of widespread voter fraud.

This time it’s worse.