Republicans Push to Purge Voter Rolls Amid Allegations of Undocumented Voting.
The Republican Party, along with conservative politicians and right-wing groups aligned with Donald Trump, is attempting to purge over one million voters from the rolls in key battleground states. They are using rare cases of voting by undocumented immigrants as justification for this effort, which goes against federal voting laws and comes just weeks before the election.
These attempts to disenfranchise voters are likely to fail, with one such case already dismissed in court. If these legal challenges continue to be unsuccessful and Trump loses the upcoming election, the former president and his allies seem poised to use these failures to support claims that the election was stolen from them.
Trump’s legal teams have filed nearly 50 lawsuits nationwide, alleging that up to 1.4 million voters are illegally registered. Many of these lawsuits suggest that thousands of undocumented immigrants are among these ineligible voters in critical states. Trump and Republicans have frequently claimed, without evidence, that undocumented immigrants will vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.
This narrative plays into two persistent themes in Trump’s political rhetoric: the idea that undocumented immigrants are harming America and the unfounded belief that Democrats will exploit their votes to secure electoral victories. The claim that Democrats want to encourage immigration to gain votes is rooted in the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, which lacks factual support. Studies show that voting by undocumented immigrants is extremely rare, likely due to the illegality of noncitizens voting in federal elections. Nonetheless, Trump and his allies continue to advance this claim as part of their strategy to challenge a potential Harris victory in November.
Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law and co-chair of the Republican National Committee, reinforced this narrative at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on October 5. “I’ve been doing a little something […] to ensure that only legal citizens are voting here in the United States,” she said. “If you’re an illegal citizen and you’re voting in our election, we’ll track you down and prosecute you to the full extent of the law.”
Federal laws prohibit states from systematically purging voter rolls close to an election. This has led some Democrats to view these lawsuits as a means of bolstering Trump’s campaign messaging rather than genuine efforts to clean up the voter rolls.
Recently, a federal judge in Arizona dismissed a lawsuit from Trump’s allies at the America First Legal Foundation. The judge stated the group filed its suit too late. The group had claimed that “tens of thousands” of voters should be removed, suggesting some could be undocumented immigrants. Judge Krissa M. Lanham noted that the group had delayed filing their lawsuit despite allegedly facing irreparable harm since Arizona’s voter maintenance laws took effect.
In several cases, Republican lawyers seem to be intentionally delaying their voter-purge lawsuits so that resolutions will not be reached by Election Day. A campaign advisor for Harris described these lawsuits as “press releases thinly disguised as legal filings.”
Among the nearly 50 lawsuits related to voter roll maintenance, at least 12 explicitly allege that undocumented immigrants may be voting. In North Carolina, the Republican National Committee has sued the state’s election board, arguing that concerns about noncitizen voting are especially pressing this election cycle due to a surge in illegal immigration.
America First Legal did not provide evidence of large numbers of undocumented immigrants voting in Arizona, instead citing voters’ perceptions about the issue. They reported that 60% of voters in Arizona are concerned that cheating will impact the 2024 election.
A bipartisan array of experts, election officials, think tanks, and judges have concluded that voting by noncitizens is exceedingly rare. A March report by The Washington Post revealed that the conservative Heritage Foundation found only 85 cases of alleged noncitizen voting out of 2 billion votes cast in federal elections from 2002 to 2023.
Ezra Rosenberg, co-director of the Voting Rights Project, stated, “I have never seen a single iota of evidence to support the allegation that noncitizens are voting in any significant number.” The Lawyers’ Committee, of which he is a part, has filed motions to intervene in one of the Republican lawsuits regarding the North Carolina State Board of Elections’ voter roll maintenance.
Democrats argue that Republicans are not only misleading the public but also violating federal voting rights laws. Of the numerous lawsuits, 28 were filed within 90 days of the upcoming election, conflicting with the National Voter Registration Act’s stipulation that systematic removal of ineligible voters must cease during this time.
Trump’s narrative surrounding undocumented voting began shortly after his 2016 election victory over Hillary Clinton. He claimed without evidence that between three to five million votes were cast by undocumented immigrants, which he alleged caused him to lose the popular vote. The election task force Trump established to investigate noncitizen voting was disbanded after failing to find evidence.
Since 2016, the belief in widespread undocumented voting has become mainstream within the Republican Party. Following his 2020 defeat, Trump and allies like Rudy Giuliani amplified false claims of large-scale voting by undocumented immigrants. At a rally on January 6, 2021, preceding the Capitol insurrection, Trump alleged that over “36,000 ballots were illegally cast by noncitizens” in Arizona. In a revised indictment regarding Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, special prosecutor Jack Smith stated that this claim was fabricated.
In July, House Republicans passed the SAVE Act, requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration—something most states already implement. This legislation, championed by House Speaker Mike Johnson, was prompted by a small-sample study suggesting that over 6% of noncitizens voted in the 2008 presidential election. When pressed for evidence, Johnson cited intuition rather than data.
Efforts to discredit voter rolls have gained traction on the American right, with activists encouraging the examination of voter lists for “ethnic names.” A Trump-aligned group has run Spanish-language ads in swing states warning against voting by noncitizens.
Trump has frequently asserted that Democrats are intentionally permitting migrants to gain votes for their candidates. During his debate with Harris last month, he stated, “Our elections are bad. And a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote.”
Max Flugrath of the left-leaning voting rights group Fair Fight asserts that these claims are unfounded. He argues that the lawsuits aimed at supporting voter purges appear to be designed to create a narrative for Trump and his supporters to justify their claims of voter fraud following a potential loss.
“Republican lawsuits to support mass voter purge attempts don’t seem aimed at winning in court,” Flugrath stated. “It looks like their real goal is to create a narrative that Trump and the MAGA operation can use to legitimize their lies about voter fraud and contest the election.”
Last week, Lara Trump reiterated her claims about undocumented immigrant voting in a fundraising email, citing “experts” who alleged “as many as 2.7 million illegals could vote in November.” This assertion seems to be based on claims made by John Agresti, who refers to himself as a Christian who found objective evidence for the Bible’s accuracy.
Agresti referenced the same study as Johnson, despite other studies indicating that noncitizen voting is nearly nonexistent. In Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger discovered in 2022 that 1,634 noncitizens registered to vote, yet none cast a ballot.
Some Republican officials are openly challenging the Biden administration to support their narrative regarding noncitizen voting. Recently, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton demanded citizenship information for nearly half a million registered voters in Texas, citing rising concerns about noncitizen voting.
“Texans are increasingly concerned about the possibility of noncitizen voting, and I have a responsibility to uphold the integrity of our elections,” Paxton stated.
The federal government is responding to these voter roll purging attempts during the NVRA’s quiet period by suing secretaries of state in Virginia and Alabama.
Democrats view Republicans’ court attempts to suggest that voter rolls are filled with ineligible voters as a strategy to lay the groundwork for future claims of a stolen election. They argue that these lawsuits lack merit and are intended to undermine democracy and public confidence in the electoral process.
“These lawsuits are completely meritless and designed only to undermine our democracy and voters’ confidence in it,” a Harris campaign memo stated. “They’re trying to plant seeds of doubt and confusion, hoping to harvest them when voters reject Donald Trump again in November.”
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