WASHINGTON, Sept 19 (Askume) – Donald Trump and his Republican allies have made baseless claims that widespread voting by non-citizens could influence the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election . Democratic supporters say the lawsuits are designed to sow distrust.
At least eight lawsuits challenging the voter registration process have been filed in four of the seven states that will decide the electoral contest between Trump and his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris .
Trump and his allies say the legal campaign is a defense of election integrity and involves a broad challenge to the citizenship of Arizona voters.
But legal experts say his court filings provide little evidence of the phenomenon, which independent studies show was too rare to have affected the election outcome.
New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, a Democrat, said, “The former president is trying to do what he’s done three times in the past and create a narrative that says, ‘If I win the election, it’s legal, if I lose, you’re being manipulated,'” In addition to his recent presidential campaign, Trump also briefly ran for the Reform Party in 2000.
The Trump campaign sought comment from a Republican National Committee spokesperson, who said: “We believe our lawsuit will prevent non-citizens from voting because it threatens the ability of Americans to vote.”
It is a serious offense for non-citizens to vote in federal elections, and independent research shows it rarely happens.
Supporters of Trump’s strategy say even one illegal vote is too many.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, told a congressional panel last week that it was rare for noncitizens to vote but that enforcement was needed to keep it in check. He said his office recently identified about 600 noncitizens out of about 8 million registered voters from the state voter rolls.
“We found 135 people who voted this year. We also found 400 people who were registered but hadn’t voted yet. And the idea that it’s already illegal? Hijacking planes is illegal, but we can’t get rid of the TSA,” LaRose said.
New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice said a study of Trump’s false claims about widespread non-citizen voting in the 2016 presidential election found only 30 such incidents occurred out of 23.5 million votes cast, or 0.0001% of the total.
90 Day Rule
The Justice Department reminded states in an advisory last week that federal law prohibits mass changes to voter rolls within 90 days of an election and prohibits deletions targeting certain categories of voters, such as new citizens.
Democratic advocates say that fact shows that Trump and his allies’ strategy in filing these lawsuits is not to ensure major changes in the electorate but to lay the groundwork for challenging the results if they lose states.
Dax Goldstein, senior counsel at the nonpartisan Center for American Democracy, said: “Lawsuits against noncitizens appearing on voter registration rolls are baseless. But they are part of an armed public relations campaign to undermine public opinion about voters.” “Election Confidence.
While national surveys, including a Askume/Ipsos poll, show Harris with a slight lead over Trump , in the seven most competitive states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the race remains fierce.
If Harris wins just one or two states, Trump’s failure to successfully challenge her in those states could be enough to overturn the election results.
“We would have dozens or hundreds less votes in our elections,” said Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, a Republican running for re-election this year in a New York district. “If a non-U.S. citizen has the right to vote in our elections, that’s a serious problem.”
For states and counties
The lawsuits, filed by the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee, the allied America First Legal Foundation and Republican state attorneys general, target state and county election processes, alleging that officials failed to collect adequate information about noncitizen voters and the steps they took to register or reside in the United States.
Rick Hasen, a UCLA law professor and election law expert, said lawyers filing these cases should use more cautious language than Trump and his allies when discussing them.
“The purpose of the disclosures is to convince Republican voters that the Democrats are trying to steal the election and that there is a lot of fraud,” Hasen said. “Once you go to court, you have to follow the rules of the court and I think you’re going to meet with lawyers to be more vigilant.”
Trump’s failed attempt to overturn his 2020 loss to Democratic President Joe Biden led to more than 60 lawsuits and his supporters storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Nearly all of the lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies in 2020 were dismissed due to lack of evidence and other issues.
Four lawsuits filed this year in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Kansas and Texas allege that Biden administration initiatives involving federal agencies to boost voter registration in 2021 could lead to a surge in voters supporting Democrat efforts.
Ken Blackwell, president of the Election Integrity Center at the America First Policy Institute and a former Ohio secretary of state, said last month of the social platform that it “opens the door for citizens to vote.”
The 41-page complaint filed in federal court in Kansas by nine state Republican attorneys general mentions only undocumented immigrant voting, claiming the Biden administration has “failed to investigate the risk that illegal “aliens” attempt to register to vote.”
The Republican National Committee and the North Carolina Republican Party have twice sued the state’s elections board, accusing it of allowing non-citizens to vote. The lawsuits allege the state registered about 225,000 voters, or about 3% of the electorate, without adequate documentation and has not removed from voter rolls people who claimed to be serving as jurors at the time.
The state is deeply divided politically, with two Republican senators, a Republican-controlled Legislature but a Democratic governor in Roy Cooper, and an evenly divided delegation in the U.S. House of Representatives.
State elections board spokesman Patrick Gannon said they complied with jury duty requirements and identified nine registered voters who claimed they were not citizens.
Gannon said if the citizenship status of these nine people could not be confirmed, they would have to cancel their registration. He said the state cannot forcibly remove them from the list so close to the election.
Gannon said the second lawsuit filed over allegedly faulty registration forms “greatly exaggerates any alleged problems.”
In Arizona, the pro-Trump group America First Laws filed a lawsuit aimed at forcing counties to investigate about 44,000 voters, or about 1% of the state’s electorate, who were rejected because they failed to submit proof of registration.
The controversy concerns the state’s two-tier voter registration system , which requires proof of U.S. citizenship to vote in state elections, but not federal elections.
But even some longtime political activists in Arizona say noncitizen voting poses no threat to local elections.
“That’s not happening,” said Chuck Coughlin, a Phoenix political strategist who retired in 2017 and is now an independent candidate. “This is a Make America Great Again narrative to mislead Republicans about the integrity of the election.”
