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Trump says 278,000 noncitizens are on voting rolls. Experts say that's wrong.
The claim came as the Trump administration vowed to withhold funding from states that don’t participate in federal programs purporting to secure elections.
www.washingtonpost.com/politi...
— Daniel Johnson (@danieljohnson.bsky.social) 2026-07-17T21:43:31.431Z
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/07/17/trump-said-278000-noncitizens-are-voting-rolls-experts-say-thats-wrong
According to Trump and Mullin, about 278,000 noncitizens are unlawfully registered to vote in federal elections in a number of states where they said the rolls were reviewed. They said 250,000 of those people were in just four states: Nevada, California, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Their assessment did not include all states.
The president’s claim suggests that noncitizens who cast ballots could unlawfully swing election results in a particularly tight federal race.
But a review of public documents and interviews with government officials and election experts shows that the figure is significantly overstated and that officials have struggled to find instances of voter fraud by noncitizens to back the president’s assertions. Assessments by government officials and outside election experts have repeatedly concluded that noncitizens represent a miniscule number of voters.
“We can affirm that on its face, we refute these claims. These numbers are wildly speculative at best and the Department of Homeland Security hasn’t shared anything that backs it up,” Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar said in a statement.......
But relying on publicly available data means that federal officials were probably not using verified and up-to-date information. States often intentionally publish incomplete identifying information on their public voting rolls — such as an incomplete birthday — to protect people’s privacy.....
Election experts said that using this public data would result in confusing the identities of people who have common or similar names. In many instances, naturalized citizens remain improperly labeled as noncitizens in government databases, experts said.
Even as the administration is touting the SAVE database, contradictory court rulings muddled the picture on whether states can participate.
In June, a federal judge in D.C. halted full use of the database when she found some citizens had wrongly had their voter registrations revoked because officials were relying on a system they “knew to be unreliable.” The D.C. Circuit is considering an appeal of that ruling.
The president’s claim suggests that noncitizens who cast ballots could unlawfully swing election results in a particularly tight federal race.
But a review of public documents and interviews with government officials and election experts shows that the figure is significantly overstated and that officials have struggled to find instances of voter fraud by noncitizens to back the president’s assertions. Assessments by government officials and outside election experts have repeatedly concluded that noncitizens represent a miniscule number of voters.
“We can affirm that on its face, we refute these claims. These numbers are wildly speculative at best and the Department of Homeland Security hasn’t shared anything that backs it up,” Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar said in a statement.......
But relying on publicly available data means that federal officials were probably not using verified and up-to-date information. States often intentionally publish incomplete identifying information on their public voting rolls — such as an incomplete birthday — to protect people’s privacy.....
Election experts said that using this public data would result in confusing the identities of people who have common or similar names. In many instances, naturalized citizens remain improperly labeled as noncitizens in government databases, experts said.
Even as the administration is touting the SAVE database, contradictory court rulings muddled the picture on whether states can participate.
In June, a federal judge in D.C. halted full use of the database when she found some citizens had wrongly had their voter registrations revoked because officials were relying on a system they “knew to be unreliable.” The D.C. Circuit is considering an appeal of that ruling.
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