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Saturday, Oct. 31, 2020

Do people who aren’t US citizens commonly vote in its elections?

Christopher Hutton, Gigafact Foundry
no

Voting by noncitizens in state and national elections is rare, and usually unintentional. Analyzing the 2016 general election, NYU's Brennan Center found only 30 instances of suspected noncitizen voting among 23.5 million votes in 42 jurisdictions.

When noncitizens register to vote, it's usually by accident—for example, by confusedly responding "yes" to a DMV employee's query about whether they'd like to register. In January 2019, Illinois discovered a software glitch registered as voters more than 545 noncitizens applying for state ID, even though they answered "no" to a citizenship question.

Rates of noncitizen registration have been exaggerated. In 2019, Texas revised a claim that 95,000 noncitizens were on state voter rolls to a list of 4,500. In 2014, Florida warned of 180,000 noncitizen registrations, but ultimately only removed 85 noncitizens from its rolls.

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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by newsrooms in the Gigafact network.

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