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It’s not hard to identify non-citizen voting — and many people are looking.
Unlike voter impersonation fraud, which is
also exceptionally rare, non-citizen voting involves ineligible persons registering and voting in their own names. If a non-citizen were to vote, their name would be permanently listed in the record of persons who voted in that election as well as on the list of registered voters in that jurisdiction for as long as they remain registered. Those lists can be reviewed or compared to lists of non-citizens to identify anyone that was ineligible to vote. List comparisons are often
unreliable because the databases states rely on do not contain up-to-date citizenship status and because of common names causing false matches. These flaws, however, make it likely that investigations will
overstate the number of ineligible voters rather than let some go by unnoticed.
The registration and voting records enable several different stakeholders to identify any non-citizens who voted in an election. First, state election officials are required by law to regularly scour the voter rolls for ineligible voters. Many have used the list comparison technique to comb through their entire list of registered voters, and still found minimal evidence of non-citizens voting. In 2012, Florida conducted this type of analysis of its list of 12 million registered, active voters. At first the state believed it had identified 180,000 potential ineligible voters by searching a state database with out-of-date citizenship information. Upon further investigation, the state narrowed that list down to 2,600 and sent it on to county election officials for review. After the counties conducted their own investigations,
Florida removed just 85 ineligible registrants from their statewide list and only
one person was convicted for fraud. Investigations in
Colorado,
Iowa,
Michigan, and
Ohio ended similarly.
