We talked to

We spoke to state election officials to learn how they prevent noncitizens from voting in federal elections. Published Oct. 20, 2026 One of the most obvious effects of U.S. President Donald Trump's presidencies has been a growing distrust in U.S. elections. Trump has claimed for more than a decade that elections are "rigged" against him and other Republicans, and though election deniers certainly existed before him, his victories gave the narrative a national platform and real support. One type of claim of fraud that Trump and others have spread focuses on alleged noncitizen voting. Such claims vary, but we've found that they generally map to the following train of thought: The Democratic Party has transported a massive number of immigrants into the United States, through either legal or unauthorized channels. These immigrants are instructed (or bribed) to vote for Democrats, presumably as a deal for letting them into the country. The number of immigrants who will supposedly vote in the election is large enough to change the result of the election. Without these supposed "illegal" votes, Trump and/or another Republican candidate would win the election. This rhetoric was especially prevalent during the 2024 presidential election — Trump made immigration a massive part of his election platform and consistently attacked former President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on the issue. Since retaking office, his administration has promoted the SAVE America Act, which analysts say would heavily restrict voting access, and attempted to find evidence suggesting his so-called problem of noncitizen voting is a real concern, sowing further distrust in the process. For example, a July news release from the Department of Homeland Security suggested, without providing any supporting evidence, that more than 250,000 noncitizens were registered to vote across California, Nevada, New Jersey and Pennsylvania (note that three of these four states have Democratic governors). Snopes fact-checked the DHS claim, speaking to election officials from all four states. All four denied the allegations, noting that even if the figures were correct, DHS had not provided them with the information necessary to do anything about it. Over the years, Snopes' investigations have consistently revealed that claims about noncitizen voting are contradicted by the following facts: The Democratic Party is not transporting a massive number of immigrants into the United States (especially not in 2026, given they are the minority party). We've also repeatedly disproved claims that the Democratic Party is "importing immigrants" and providing them with benefits. It is illegal for any noncitizen, whether in the country legally or not, to vote in U.S. federal elections. The punishments for doing so are severe and include deportation. There are many protections in place that prevent noncitizens from voting. Because of these protections, noncitizen voting rarely happens — and certainly not at the frequency required to sway the results of a presidential election. Trump has been saying this for 12 years Trump's history of election denialism goes back so far that it even predates his 2016 presidential bid. In an October 2014 post on Twitter (now X), he claimed there was "nothing stopping illegal immigrants from voting," which he said was "very bad (unfair) for Republicans." As will become a running theme, he did not cite any sources. During his 2016 campaign, Trump falsely claimed that 14% of noncitizens were registered to vote, relying on a faulty and improperly collected dataset, according to PolitiFact. In 2020, Trump infamously refused to concede the election he lost to Biden, claiming massive fraud. In this case, he did not connect the alleged fraud to immigration or noncitizens, but the claim sowed doubt in electoral security nonetheless. In 2022, Trump supporters who believed his rigged election claim became poll watchers. Reuters reported an uptick in poll watchers, who are supposed to be nonpartisan observers, illegally intimidating voters and poll workers. The Republican National Committee also established a voter integrity program that year to ensure the results were fair. In 2024, the Trump campaign partnered with the RNC and expanded the voter integrity program, explicitly saying its purpose was to "stop Democrat attempts to circumvent rules." The allegation that noncitizen immigrants were illegally registering to vote was just one of the ideas the Trump campaign used to justify these efforts. What the evidence says Noncitizens rarely vote in U.S. elections. This is not a partisan opinion. The Cato Institute, a conservative think tank, concluded this in 2020 and reiterated the same conclusion in 2026 Supposed data that concludes the opposite is often wrong. That survey Trump cited in 2016 to claim that 14% of noncitizens were registered to vote? A 2015 statistical analysis of that study found the result was simply due to human error — out of a nationally representative sample, all the "noncitizens" who marked themselves as registered to vote were almost certainly U.S. citizens who accidentally recorded themselves as noncitizens when taking the survey. In 2016 and 2017, the Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal nonprofit organization, investigated 42 jurisdictions across 12 states to find out whether there was any truth to claims of voter fraud. Of the 10 jurisdictions across the nation with the highest population of noncitizens, the survey looked at eight of them. According to the center's report, voters cast 23.5 million votes in these jurisdictions in the election. The institute counted 30 cases of suspected noncitizen voting that required further investigation. That's an occurrence rate of 0.0001% — similar to the odds of being struck by lightning in your life. Under federal law, states are required to maintain and audit voter rolls regularly to ensure an election's integrity. As an example, Georgia was a focal point of the 2020 election. Trump claimed fraud and asked Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find 11,780 votes," essentially asking him to flip the state's results. Raffensperger ordered an audit of Georgia's voter rolls in 2022 announcing that the state found 1,634 cases in which a noncitizen attempted to register to vote between 1997 to 2022, about 65 per year. But according to that report, none of the individuals in those cases ever officially voted, thanks to the existing protections that safeguard the voter registration process. Registration protections In order to learn about the numerous protections in place to prevent noncitizens from voting in U.S. federal elections, Snopes spoke to election officials in Arizona and North Carolina, two of the swing states in the 2024 election. Based on their testimony, these are the steps any noncitizen in the country would have to take in order to cast just one ballot and have it counted. First, if the noncitizen encounters government officials while entering the U.S. (i.e. they enter through a legal port of entry or seek asylum), their name and other identifying information will be added to a federal database that marks them as a noncitizen. Second, this person would need to apply to register to vote (except in North Dakota, which verifies voter eligibility at polling places with a strict voter ID law). The other 49 states require voters to attest under penalty of law that they are U.S. citizens, that they are over the age of 18 and that they are residents of the state they wish to vote in. Any noncitizen found to be misrepresenting themself as a citizen "for any purpose or benefit," including to vote, would face deportation. These registration forms require applicants to provide a large amount of personal information. This is a problem for immigrants living in the country illegally, who may rightly be afraid the government could use that information to arrest or deport them. During the voter registration process, according to the election officials, the individual would have to prove they are a resident of the state they live in, most commonly using a driver's license or Social Security number. In order to apply for that documentation, the individual would have to provide more identifying information to the government (here are the requirements for a Social Security Card, for instance) alongside immigration paperwork that confirms their status as a noncitizen. At this point in the process, multiple governmental databases would now list this person as a noncitizen. The election officials told Snopes that each voter registration application is reviewed and cross-checked against driver's license and federal immigration databases from the Department of Homeland Security to scan for any discrepancies. If election officials have any suspicions, (for instance, if information is missing because the immigrant entered without authorization and is therefore not in a database), they can flag the application for further review. That process requires even more personal information from the voter, and election officials can always deny the application if they aren't satisfied. A few jurisdictions in the United States, including San Francisco and Washington, D.C., allow noncitizens to vote, but only in some local elections, not federal elections. In San Francisco, for instance, noncitizens are allowed to vote in school board elections only. However, noncitizens in these jurisdictions must register to vote using a specific form in a specific way. This means that such noncitizens are added to the voter rolls with the explicit knowledge that they are noncitizen voters, and their ballots can be tracked as such. Looking at a different case, between June 2023 and June 2024, a glitch at the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission mistakenly placed 6,600 noncitizens applying for driver's licenses and state IDs on voter rolls despite them answering "no" when asked whether they were citizens. That might sound more concerning, and perhaps it is. But, as Gerry Cohen, a member of the Board of Elections in Wake County, North Carolina, told Snopes, "There's a big difference between registering to vote and actually voting." New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill, who was not governor when the glitch occurred, said in a statement that of the 6,600 noncitizens placed on voter rolls as a result of the glitch, fewer than 400 cast ballots, and they did so across both party affiliations. There was no evidence that the noncitizen voting flipped the results of any races. Protections at the polling place Taylor Kinnerup, communications director for the Maricopa County recorder's office in Arizona, added an additional distinction in a Zoom call: "There's also a big difference between casting a vote and that vote being counted." After arriving at a polling place, according to Kinnerup and Cohen, voters are required to provide their name (and depending on the jurisdiction, their ID). These names are then checked against registration records (again, except in North Dakota). If there's a match, a ballot is printed for the voter. The voter then signs, affirming under penalty of law that they understand the penalties of casting a fraudulent ballot. The voter's signature is a part of the verification process. Kinnerup said Maricopa County poll workers compare the signature to the voter's other recorded signatures before the ballot is opened and counted. As with voter registration, election officials can flag the ballot for further inspection if they have any doubts about the validity of the voter's signature. Under Section 302 of the Help America Vote Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2002, voters who are not on a voter roll but attest they are an eligible voter can still cast a provisional ballot in a federal election, something that might initially seem concerning. But even in this case, there are still protections. A provisional ballot is counted only if the voter's identity, citizenship and residency can be confirmed in the days following the election. Kinnerup explained the process using an example she said Arizona regularly deals with. "California is a deep blue state, and some Republicans in Southern California might have the idea to cast a ballot in Arizona because it's a more competitive election," she said. "So there are Republicans in Southern California who drive across the border to Yuma County, Arizona, walk into a polling place and ask for a ballot." The Help America Vote Act requires election workers to provide such people with a ballot. However, in order for these ballots to count, these voters would need to provide identification to confirm their citizenship and residency. Their California driver's licenses would be a red flag for poll workers, indicating these would-be voters were not Arizona residents, and the ballots would not be counted after investigating the voters' credentials. What Trump has done since 2025 Since 2025, Trump's Justice Department has filed more than 60 charges of voter fraud against noncitizens, according to Reuters, marking a significant increase from Biden's presidency (according to the right-leaning Washington Times, Biden's Justice Department charged 13 noncitizens over four years). It's also worth noting that being charged with a crime does not imply guilt — a 2026 PBS investigation into allegations of noncitizen voting found that Trump's DOJ has announced "far more charges than [it has announced] convictions." The administration has also attempted to create a national voter registry database to prevent noncitizen voting. In March 2025, Trump issued an executive order calling for the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to share data in order to make it easier for state and local governments to verify citizenship and voter status. The League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center sued over privacy concerns, and a federal judge granted a stay, preventing the government from implementing the data consolidation. The Supreme Court overturned that decision in September, clearing the way for the Trump administration to create the combined database. As part of that March 2025 executive order, the Trump administration also demanded all states reform their voting registration systems and send voter rolls to the administration, threatening to withhold federal funding if they do not comply. Those orders have also been tangled up in lawsuits, and the Trump administration has often lost. On the Congressional side, Republicans have attempted to seize on the narrative through the SAVE America Act, a bill that would mandate those wishing to register to vote show documented proof of U.S. citizenship. This means that in order to register to vote, voters would have to submit an identity document such as a REAL ID or passport when registering to vote. However, those IDs would be valid under the SAVE America Act only because obtaining them also requires providing citizenship documentation like naturalization papers or a birth certificate — a document that 9% of American citizens don't have immediate access to, according to research from the Brennan Center. Although the SAVE America Act has passed through the Republican-controlled House of Representatives several times, it has been repeatedly blocked in the Senate. Trump has repeatedly pushed Republicans to make the bill a top priority. For instance, in September 2024, facing the threat of a government shutdown, Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, calling for Republicans to reject any stopgap spending bill that did not include "absolute assurances on election security," because Democrats were supposedly attempting to "stuff" voter registrations with "illegal aliens." (The SAVE America Act was briefly resurrected at that point, but Democrats objected to its inclusion in the spending bill. Eventually, House Speaker Mike Johnson partnered with Democrats to pass a bill that did not include the SAVE America Act in order to avoid a government shutdown). In March, Trump threatened to not sign any bills until Congress passed the SAVE America Act. In June, Trump initially appeared to back a bipartisan bill on housing reform before backing off for the same reason. The effect of these threats is unclear, however — bills automatically become law if the president does not sign them within 10 days. Finally, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has conducted public and sometimes violent arrests of immigrants throughout Trump's second term, including cases where migrants have been pulled out of their cars on the street or arrested at immigration hearings. Some have been sent to foreign countries and camps where they have allegedly been tortured. This has led many immigrants — authorized and unauthorized — to tread carefully. Since 2024, according to the Brennan Center, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, Ohio, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming have all passed laws establishing or tightening voter ID requirements on the pretense of blocking noncitizen voting. The Democratic Party's immigration platform Part of what made Trump's claims about noncitizen voting stick is that they combined two of his favorite targets: election integrity and border security. It's important to examine what exactly Trump and his allies claim when criticizing or attacking Democrats in that regard. The following post on X is a good example: The post claims that during a town hall with Latino voters, Democratic then-presidential nominee Kamala Harris said she wanted to allow "illegal immigrants to become citizens who will then be able to vote." This is an explanation of the Democratic Party's immigration platform and a statement about the privileges of United States citizenship, not an admission that Harris was going to rig the election. Harris was stating a fact: that immigrants in the United States illegally do not have a direct path to citizenship. Although it is true that giving such immigrants a pathway to citizenship would eventually allow them, as naturalized citizens, to vote in U.S. federal elections, going through that process would likely take a long time. 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