The Big Lie 2.0: Noncitizen Voting

Oh, the irony. Source: usatoday.com

The claims that undocumented immigrants are showing up in droves to vote are simply not true.

Common Nonsense

When you think about it, it doesn’t make sense. Why would people who are in this country illegally, whose primal needs for food, shelter, and a steady income outweigh most other earthly pursuits, whose lives are spent living in the shadows and avoiding authority figures…why would these people risk fines, imprisonment, and deportation by voting illegally in US elections?

Since 1996, it’s been against the law for noncitizens to vote in federal elections (president, senator, congressman). This is probably why there is scant evidence of noncitizen voting. The Heritage Foundation, Trump’s own Project 2025 consultant, revealed that within its database of 1,546 “proven instances of voter fraud” going back to the ’80s, a mere 68 cases were verified as noncitizen voting.

Episodes of noncitizen voter registration are often the result of a misunderstanding or clerical error. For example, when a state offers instant voter registration when applying for a driver’s license, a noncitizen accidentally checks that box.

The point is, noncitizens will not put themselves in the government’s crosshairs just to cast a ballot. Walk a mile in their shoes.

But if the logic of this argument is compelling, then why are we hearing a lot about noncitizen voting? Good question.

Republican Demagoguery

Source: imgflip

It started with an escalator ride down Trump Tower, on June 16, 2015, when Donald Trump declared his candidacy and memorably declared: “When Mexico sends its people..they’re sending people that [sic] have lots of problems…They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists…”

And so began the Republican Party’s descent into advanced xenophobia. Trump and the Republicans have seized on recycling old racial grievances to animate their “base” supporters. None other than Bruce Springsteen, in a YouTube interview, explains its effectiveness: “If you’re uncomfortable about the browning of America, well, we’re going to build a wall and keep all those people out.”

And if you can’t keep them out, make them the villains of free and fair elections. It comes with fringe benefits.

The Big Lie 2.0

That’s why the’re allowing these people to come in–people that don’t speak our language–they are signing them up to vote.

Donald Trump on January 5, 2024 at the Iowa Caucuses

Perennial Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has made fearmongering about noncitizen voting his calling card. It is part and parcel of what is called “the great replacement theory,” which contends that white people of European descent are being replaced by nonwhite illegal immigrants, who Democrats are signing up to vote. Of course, there’s zero evidence of Democrats doing this.

Trump raised the issue of noncitizen voting, as chronicled by the Washington Post, in both the presidential elections of 2016 and 2020:

• After he won the presidency in 2016, Trump claimed that the reason he lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton by 2.8 million votes was the 3 million cast by undocumented immigrants;
•  In 2020, when the popular vote tally showed Joe Biden beating Trump by 7 million, Trump again alleged noncitizen voting in battleground states like Arizona, where Trump claimed without evidence that 36,000 undocumented immigrants voted.

Planting the Seeds for 2024

On a deeper level, Trump’s false assertions go beyond a mere debate about numbers. They’re part of a grand strategy to boost the electoral prospects of Republicans, whose party has tacked far to the right and seems unwilling or unable to open its tent beyond the MAGA faithful.

Proclaiming widespread illegal voting sows doubt in our electoral system, in which cynical voters look for someone to blame. It also gives Trump the basis for challenging the 2024 presidential vote if it doesn’t go his way. Trump still claims he won the 2020 election despite being laughed out of court in 62 lawsuits challenging the election results.

Source: ilapmaine.org

Republican Chaos

On the November ballot in more than a half-dozen states, voters will be asked to affirm what is already illegal, that noncitizens cannot vote. According to Charley Cook of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, “A lot of ballot initiatives are sort of tools for parties to do things like jack up their turnout.” (Democrats do the same thing on the abortion issue.)

Congress is now grappling with a stopgap funding bill to avoid a government shutdown on Sep. 30. House Republicans recently added a provision, called the SAVE Act, that would require immigrants to show documented proof of citizenship when registering to vote. According to a survey by the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement, approximately 21.3 million eligible voters (13 percent of all voters) report they either do not have or cannot quickly find proof of citizenship (birth certificate, passport, or naturalization papers). Experts contend this would disproportionately affect people of color and young voters.

Even though the bill’s fate is uncertain in the House and a non-starter in the Senate, Donald Trump is leading the charge for Congress to let the government shut down rather than pass a “clean” funding bill without the SAVE Act provision. Remember that noncitizens are barred from voting in the first place.

Coda

Why now? Why has noncitizen voting become the issue du jour among Republicans? David Becker, head of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, asks an important question:

Why are you raising claims about noncitizen [voting] when House Republicans have controlled Congress since Janurary 2023, when Donald Trump was the president of the United States for four years and could have done something about this?

Why indeed. For Republicans, it seems timing is everything.