Former President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson recently appeared at Mar-a-Lago, raising concerns about the integrity of US elections. Trump’s team framed the event as focusing on “election integrity,” referring to his unfounded claims about the 2020 election being rigged and future voter fraud. During their remarks, Johnson made baseless claims about potentially hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants casting votes in the November election. He suggested a bill requiring proof of US citizenship when registering to vote for federal elections to address this issue.
However, data and experts have shown that voting by non-citizens in US elections is extremely rare. Existing systems effectively prevent mass voting by non-citizens, and federal and state laws make it illegal for non-citizens to vote with consequences such as imprisonment or deportation. The Heritage Foundation’s fraud database lists less than 100 examples of non-citizens voting out of over a billion lawful ballots. Additionally, the Brennan Center for Justice found only 30 examples of non-citizen voting in over 23 million votes from the 2016 election. The risks and minimal impact of non-citizens voting make it an unlikely scenario, according to experts like David Becker and Rick Hasen.
Trump has a history of spreading false claims about foreign nationals voting in US elections. At the appearance with Johnson, he claimed that millions of people, including terrorists and criminals, were coming to the US illegally from countries like Venezuela and the Congo. However, there is no evidence to support Trump’s claims of countries emptying prisons and mental health institutions to send individuals to the US border. Past fact-checking efforts have found no substantiation for such claims, and experts have not seen any evidence of such actions from various sources.
Trump also baselessly accused Biden of orchestrating criminal cases against him as election interference. He suggested that a former Justice Department official under Biden, who joined the office of the Manhattan District Attorney prosecuting his case, was part of this alleged interference. However, there is no evidence to support Trump’s claims that Biden or his administration influenced the case against him. The Manhattan District Attorney is an independently elected official, and there is no link between the White House and the cases against Trump.
During the appearance, Trump exaggerated the number of migrants entering the US under the Biden administration, claiming there were 15 million. However, data from US Customs and Border Protection shows nearly 9.4 million border encounters since Biden took office. While there has been a surge in migrants at the southern border, Trump’s figures are inflated. Additionally, Trump falsely claimed that every legal scholar wanted Roe v. Wade overturned, when in fact, many legal scholars support preserving the landmark Supreme Court decision. Several experts have reiterated their support for upholding Roe v. Wade, contradicting Trump’s statement.
