Trump Is Spreading Lies About Noncitizen Voting | EUROtoday

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In the ultimate days of the 2024 election, Republicans are hammering house the lie that there’s 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 mentioned in the course of the September presidential debate along 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 stage, Trump is as soon as once more vilifying immigrants and echoing the white nationalist Great Replacement conspiracy concept that asserts the left is making an attempt to “import” voters to take the place of white Americans. But behind the lie is a widespread try and purge hundreds of individuals, together with U.S. residents, from voter rolls. In the occasion Trump loses the election, this lie will seemingly undergird his all-but-assured marketing campaign to declare the outcome rigged.

Republicans have raised the prospect of noncitizens voting for years. Trump infamously mentioned he would have received the favored vote in 2016 however for “millions of people who voted illegally” ― a false declare for which neither Trump nor the person who began the lie, right-wing activist Gregg Phillips of the conspiracy concept group True the Vote, ever supplied any proof. As president, Trump created a shady Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity meant to analyze his false declare that hundreds of thousands had voted illegally. The fee shut down in 2018 with out publishing any proof of widespread voter fraud.

“There was an explosion this year of how central this [lie] was,” mentioned Zachary Mueller, senior analysis director at America’s Voice, an immigrant rights group that advocates for a path for citizenship for undocumented individuals. “I’ve been following this issue for many, many years, and there was a notable uptick this year.”

CBS News obtained a video this week of a Republican Party official and native “election integrity” chief in North Carolina telling volunteers that voters with “missing” info and “Hispanic-sounding last names” must be handled as “suspicious” if registered to vote within the last three months earlier than Election Day.

James Womack, the Lee County Republican Party chair and founding father of the North Carolina Election Integrity Team, informed CBS News he’d must see the “full context” of his personal remarks to touch upon them. Womack’s group was constructing the checklist of “suspicious” voter registrations at hand over to election officers, endangering the flexibility of individuals on the checklist to forged a poll. He didn’t reply to HuffPost’s questions on what that context was.

Illegal voting by noncitizens, in keeping with all obtainable information, is extraordinarily uncommon ― “there is no evidence that noncitizen voting has ever been significant enough to impact an election’s outcome,” in keeping with the Bipartisan Policy Center.

On Wednesday, for instance, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger mentioned an audit of his state’s voter rolls had discovered that out of 8.2 million registered voters within the state, simply 20 turned out to not be U.S. residents. Of these, solely 9 had ever voted in previous elections, the Republican official mentioned. Nationwide, noncitizens face prison penalties and potential deportation for voting illegally, and election officers use federal databases and different strategies to substantiate voters’ eligibility.

Republicans have however made each try and create the impression that noncitizen voting is a significant drawback. Voters in eight states this 12 months, for instance, will resolve on poll measures to ban noncitizens from voting, despite the fact that it’s already unlawful apart from a handful of localities that enable noncitizen residents to vote on native points.

In April, pushing the “SAVE Act,” a invoice that may require documentary proof of citizenship to vote, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) participated in a information convention with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida personal membership, and accused Democrats of scheming to one way or the other enable ineligible immigrants to vote.

“We believe one of the reasons for this open border… is because they want to turn these people into voters,” Johnson mentioned. He added later: “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.” (The following month, Johnson admitted that widespread voting by noncitizens had “not been something that is easily provable.”)

Tech billionaire Elon Musk, who has spent tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} to assist elect Trump, recurrently shares related lies and misrepresentations on X, his social media platform previously referred to as Twitter, as produce other influential right-wing accounts.

Cleta Mitchell, an lawyer who joined Trump on his now notorious Jan. 2, 2021, name to Raffensperger, when Trump tried to stress the Georgia official to “find” sufficient votes to make Trump the state’s winner, launched the Election Integrity Network (EIN) in 2021 partly to cancel hundreds of supposedly suspicious voter registrations nationwide.

“The Democrats’ plan for 2024 is to change the electorate,” Mitchell mentioned final month, testifying in assist of the SAVE Act. “If they cannot persuade the American People to want their Marxist policies for America, just import voters who don’t speak the language, don’t have a shared commitment to our country and our national principles, get them into the very porous voter registration system, and collect their votes.”

“The Democrats’ plan for 2024 is to change the electorate.”

– Election Integrity Network founder Cleta Mitchell

Womack is affiliated with the Election Integrity Network, which itself can be a part of a a lot bigger Trump-aligned community. Video of Mitchell’s remarks is featured on the webpage for the Only Citizens Vote coalition, which lists dozens of member teams, together with highly effective, deep-pocketed gamers within the election denial universe.

There isn’t any proof in any respect that Democrats ― or any others ― are working to induce noncitizens to vote.

Nonetheless, polling exhibits Republicans consider the rhetoric. Though massive majorities of voters supporting each Harris and Trump assume it’s necessary to cease noncitizens from voting, solely 35% of Trump supporters are very or considerably assured that noncitizens will probably be stopped from voting, in contrast with 92% of Harris supporters, in keeping with survey outcomes from Pew Research Center launched Thursday.

One sensible impact of this lie is that GOP officers in a number of states have cited issues over supposed noncitizen voting in makes an attempt to purge hundreds of individuals from voter registration lists.

Sometimes voter registration purges ― or “list maintenance” ― occur for legitimate causes, corresponding to common updates for when a voter’s loss of life is confirmed by authorities information or when a voter confirms to election officers they’ve moved to a different state.

Republicans, mockingly, have made this sort of day-to-day information a lot more durable to substantiate, with GOP officers in a number of states exiting a multi-state group (the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC) that inspired information-sharing and cut up the price of costly databases.

In its place, right-wing citizen activists have used new, error-prone software program to problem hundreds of registrations at a time on the native stage, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of those challenges are false positives. At the identical time, the Republican Party and its allies have pursued lawsuits to power election officers to take away extra individuals from the rolls, regardless of a federal prohibition on “systematic” purges inside 90 days of an election. The 90-day “quiet period” is supposed to make sure voters have enough time to show their eligibility within the occasion they’re mistakenly faraway from the rolls.

In Alabama earlier this month, a federal decide ordered Secretary of State Wes Allen to cease the deactivation of greater than 3,200 supposed “Noncitizens Registered to Vote in Alabama.” Allen’s August press launch saying the purge alleged individuals on the checklist had, no less than at one level, “been issued noncitizen identification numbers by the Department of Homeland Security.” It granted that it was “possible” some individuals on his checklist had truly since turn into residents and eligible voters however added, lower than two months earlier than Election Day, that “those naturalized citizens” must replace their voter registration info. He additionally referred your entire checklist to the state’s lawyer common for “investigation and possible criminal prosecution.”

The purge checklist included no less than one U.S.-born citizen, NPR reported, and a lawsuit from civil rights teams listed a number of extra residents swept up within the purge, each naturalized and U.S.-born, together with one man who merely “mistakenly checked a box on an unemployment benefits application identifying himself as a noncitizen” earlier than correcting the error two years in the past. State officers’ testimony confirmed that no less than 2,000 individuals on the checklist ― almost two-thirds ― had been residents and authorized voters. U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco, a Trump appointee, famous in her order earlier this month that Allen “admitted that his purge list included thousands of United States citizens.”

Allen informed HuffPost in an announcement that he was “limited” in his potential to remark as a result of ongoing litigation. He mentioned he would adjust to the court docket’s order and added, “State and federal laws are clear that only eligible American citizens can vote in our elections. Last week’s order does not change that.”

Similar GOP fits searching for purges and alleging improper voter checklist upkeep have been dismissed in Nevada and Michigan. A separate ongoing go well with in Nevada alleges hundreds of noncitizens are on the voter rolls ― despite the fact that the state’s then-Republican secretary of state debunked the declare in 2021 ― and that noncitizen voting “favors Democratic candidates and harms Republican candidates.” Last week, a Trump-appointed decide in North Carolina shot down Republicans’ try and invalidate 225,000 voter registrations within the state. Separately, judges in Michigan and North Carolina have shot down Republican fits focusing on army and abroad voters.

In Virginia on Friday, a federal decide ordered the state to revive the voter registrations of over 1,600 individuals who the state had purged since August – in the course of the 90-day “quiet period” earlier than Election Day. The supposed noncitizens had been focused by the governor as a result of they selected “No” in response to questions on their citizenship standing on sure Department of Motor Vehicles paperwork. The Justice Department and civil rights teams had sued the state over the quiet interval purges, arguing the DMV information is unreliable, notably as a result of individuals usually work together with the DMV earlier than finally gaining citizenship and changing into eligible to vote. Others may have merely made a mistake on paperwork.

The Justice Department cited one county board assembly through which a registrar famous that of dozens of purged “noncitizens” who’d beforehand voted, “Every single one of them had verified their citizenship previously, some as many as five times, and they all had Social Security numbers. We had to cancel them, because of state protocol.” He later mentioned the vast majority of that group had re-registered. Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin promised Friday to attraction.

A spokesperson for Youngkin individually pointed HuffPost to a Fox News look through which the governor disputed the time period “purge” and mentioned individuals faraway from voter rolls had been first given “14 days to affirm they are a citizen” or in any other case forged a provisional poll.

In an announcement to HuffPost, a Trump marketing campaign press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, falsely accused Democrats of “pushing for non-citizens to vote and influence the future of our country” and accused the Justice Department of pursuing “lawfare” towards Youngkin. Democrats, the assertion added, “aren’t even trying to hide their election interference schemes.”

This summer season, Tennessee officers despatched letters to hundreds of voters telling them their info “matches with an individual who may not have been a United States citizen at the time of obtaining a Tennessee driver license or ID card” and warning that voting as a noncitizen was a felony punishable by two years in jail. It was solely after the American Civil Liberties Union threatened authorized motion that the state clarified it wouldn’t be purging voters who didn’t reply to the letter with citizenship documentation.

And in August, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) bragged of purging greater than 6,500 supposed noncitizens from the rolls since 2021. Journalists have since decided there are quite a few residents on the checklist, and the clerk in Travis County, house to Austin, reported name facilities had been flooded with individuals involved about their registration standing on account of the purge.

Abbott’s purge announcement was a part of a sample of Texans Republicans hyping up supposed noncitizen voting, together with the announcement of an “undercover operation” investigating voter registration efforts and a lawsuit filed this week demanding that the federal authorities assist decide the citizenship standing of 450,000 Texans who registered to vote with out offering a driver’s license or ID. (Registering with no driver’s license or state ID is authorized; candidates can use a Social Security quantity as a substitute, which “the state verifies … is authentic,” a spokesperson for the secretary of state mentioned this month. All voter registration candidates affirm they’re residents beneath penalty of perjury.)

Biden administration officers have identified that there’s a federal service for confirming citizenship standing. It’s referred to as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements service, or SAVE, and a number of states have used it for over a decade for checklist upkeep. But Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) filed a go well with Tuesday towards the Biden administration anyway, saying the service was “not an adequate tool” for verifying citizenship and noting that there was a price to make use of the service. The state of Florida filed an identical go well with earlier this month.

A voter casts a ballot Monday during early voting at a polling station in Deland, Florida.
A voter casts a poll Monday throughout early voting at a polling station in Deland, Florida.

MIGUEL J. RODRIGUEZ CARRILLO/AFP by way of Getty Images

Judges might proceed to thwart many of those efforts, however even halted purges or lawsuits work to unfold the lie of widespread noncitizen voting, they usually may intimidate voters who concern being punished regardless of being legitimate voters.

As election legislation professor Ben Berwick of the group Protect Democracy noticed to The Guardian, they may additionally flip into “zombie” lawsuits, used to contest the result of the election after it happens.

“They’re dead on arrival but will be resurrected after the election,” Berwick mentioned. “I am virtually certain that election deniers will focus on these narratives in the post-election period, both to discredit results they don’t like and as the basis for post-election legal challenges to try and throw out certain ballots or even interfere with certification of results.”

If the hassle fails within the courts, Trump and his allies may additionally merely use the specter of noncitizen voting ― even when it’s by no means established by any proof, as was the case with lies about widespread voter fraud in 2020 ― as grounds to reject the election outcomes anyway.

“I realized that we needed to focus on this threat of illegals voting in November because I absolutely believe that that is how they are planning to try to steal the election this year,” Mitchell informed key Trump ally Charlie Kirk in June, in a dialog flagged by the investigative outlet Documented. She added that left-wing nongovernmental teams had been supposedly “shepherding these migrants all over the country getting them IDs, getting them housing, paid phone cards and food cards and getting them on the voter rolls.”

Earlier this month, Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) and Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) authored a letter signed by dozens of Republican lawmakers, together with a number of who voted to overturn the 2020 election outcomes, uncritically alleging that Texas and Virginia authorities had eliminated hundreds of noncitizens from their voter rolls despite the fact that the eliminated voted registrations have been proven to have included U.S. residents.

“Clearly, there is a non-negligible amount of voter participation by non-citizens in federal elections, which is not only a serious threat to the integrity of our elections and the democratic process they represent, but also has the potential to reduce Americans’ trust and confidence in election results,” they wrote. A spokesperson for Hagerty informed HuffPost, “These statistics show that there are unquestionably noncitizens who are registered to vote, which is a federal crime.”

“All of the allegations against immigrants — demonizing immigrants, alleging that immigrants who are not allowed to vote are voting, basically trying to make it so that all immigrants are scared of voting ― that’s preparation for refusing to accept the results if their candidate loses,” Sylvia Albert of Common Cause informed Mother Jones lately.

The lie of widespread noncitizen voting can be manifesting within the voting course of itself, which may intimidate voters.

Last month, The New York Times reported on a name of Republican activists centered on supposed noncitizen voting through which a GOP chair from Georgia steered utilizing faculty enrollment information to seek out neighborhoods with massive numbers of migrants, and an activist within the Detroit space really useful looking out voter rolls for “certain types of surnames,” within the newspaper’s phrases, and hanging up indicators in “ethnic” neighborhoods.

The conspiracy concept group True the Vote has drafted letters to hypothetical potential noncitizen voters in a number of languages, titled “A Message From True the Vote to Non Citizens.”

“We understand that there may be people who are talking with you about voting in an American election,” the letter states. “Please know that these people are misleading you. And they’re putting you and your family at risk.”

Around the nation, indicators have appeared at polling locations warning noncitizens about prison penalties for unlawful voting, some positioned by activists, others required by election officers.

“If I was a monolingual Spanish speaker, I’m voting for the first time, just became a citizen and that is the only sign that I see, I’m going to question myself, even though I know I’m in the right, and I’m a citizen and I can vote,” Iliana Santillan, govt director of El Pueblo, a North Carolina-based Latino advocacy group, informed WNCN-TV of 1 brilliant yellow instance seen across the state. The indicators got here from the North Carolina Election Integrity Team, Womack’s group.

“Noncitizens who wisely choose not to vote have nothing to fear,” Womack informed WNCN.

The similar report famous one other signal, from Only Citizens Vote, that was taken down on orders from the North Carolina State Board of Elections as a result of it used the phrase “extranjero” (“foreigner”) reasonably than noncitizen.

“Therefore, that sign, this particular sign by Only Citizens Vote, was inaccurate and misleading because it stated that it is a crime essentially for a foreigner to vote,” Durham County Board of Elections Director Derek Bowens mentioned. On a name Thursday, the chief director of North Carolina’s elections board, Karen Brinson-Bell, confirmed {that a} “group or groups have produced signs that are not accurate in their translation” and that “a foreign-born individual may very well be a citizen and eligible to vote, and that’s why we instructed the counties to remove those signs.” Only Citizens Vote didn’t reply to a request for remark.

Targeting the supposed scourge of noncitizen voting has a decades-old historical past in American politics, together with with Trump’s personal allies.

Last 12 months, throughout a podcast taping with Trump allies Steve Bannon and Kari Lake, Rudy Giuliani admitted to a “dirty trick” that he mentioned his marketing campaign for New York City mayor performed in 1993.

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“So they went through East Harlem, which is all Hispanic, and they gave out little cards, and the card said, ‘If you come to vote, make sure you have your green card because [the Immigration and Naturalization Service] are picking up illegals.’ So they spread it all over the Hispanic…” Giuliani trailed off.

“That’s the way we kept down the Hispanic vote,” he added later, earlier than correcting himself at Lake’s urging. “The Hispanic illegal vote, which takes away the Hispanic legal vote.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-lie-noncitizen-voting-purges-intimidation_n_671bf095e4b0aa35532ea96b