Are thousands of people arriving illegally in the United States to vote in the presidential elections?
If you’ve spent time on Instagram, Facebook, X, or TikTok, you may have seen posts saying that there will be voter fraud this election year due to immigration during Joe Biden’s presidency. Certain publications go further, saying that Democrats are letting in to immigrants to vote against former President Donald Trump.
“BREAKING: Thousands of illegal immigrants are on their way to the United States just weeks before the elections,” dice Eduardo Menoni, whose biography in X says that he is a political analyst and editor of the conservative media Libertad Media, in a post from October 21. “Did you get it yet? Democrats want to create new voters for themselves or chaos if Donald Trump wins. Share it for everyone to see!”
This narrative — amplified by Trump and some of his followers — ha sown concern y doubts on the integrity of the American electoral system. These comments can also confuse people new to the country who do not know how the electoral system works.
But only American citizens can vote in federal elections. People who are in asylum proceedings, who arrived legally with humanitarian wordswho are in the country illegally or who only have permanent residence are not eligible to vote — neither for Trump nor for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Sign up for PolitiFact texts
Experts told us that some Latinos may have come from other countries where there is distrust in the electoral system, but that in the United States there are several ways to monitor the integrity of the vote.
Who can vote in US elections?
People eligible to vote can do so by mail, early in person or on Election Day, November 5.
The requirements to vote are:
-
Be a citizen of the United States
-
Be over 18 years of age.
-
Be registered to vote.
It is necessary to satisfy several requirements to become a US citizen and the process usually takes years and money.
A 1996 law makes it illegal for non-U.S. citizens to vote for a presidential candidate, a vice presidential candidate, a member of the Senate, a member of the House of Representatives, delegates of the District of Columbia, or a resident commissioner. A resident commissioner is an official elected in a general election who has the authority to represent an unincorporated territory of the United States (such as Puerto Rico) before the federal government. (The rights of a resident commissioner are limited.)
Anyone who violates federal law will be fined, imprisoned for not more than one year, or both.
Non-citizen voting is not common and has serious consequences
In few cities, noncitizens can vote in municipal elections.
Since 1993, Takoma Park in Maryland allows noncitizens — including permanent residents and immigrants in the country illegally — to vote in elections municipal elections. However, few non-citizens vote in that city, as many fear it will affect their immigration process.
Sometimes noncitizens appear on voter lists, often by accident when obtaining a driver’s license. However, it is rare for non-citizens to vote. In 2020 in North Carolina, federal prosecutors charged 19 people of electoral fraud for having voted in the 2016 election and one in the 2018 election. To put it in context, more than 4.5 million people in North Carolina voted in the 2016 presidential election.
A recent audit in Georgia revealed that of 8.2 million registered voters, 20 noncitizens were registered to vote, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Oct. 23 at a news conference. He said that of the 20, only nine voted in 2024. Such registrations and votes were canceled and referred to the local prosecutor’s office.
Evelyn Pérez-Verdía is a message strategist and founder of We Are Más, a multilingual agency that focuses on countering misinformation. She says the narrative about non-citizens voting does not conform to the difficulties that immigrants face on their journey to the United States.
“If you think about the trips that people sometimes take to get to the United States from crossing rivers, from passing through the Darien, which is super dangerous, why would they dare to vote when they know that if they vote it is illegal?” Pérez-Verdía said.
She added that non-citizens are not going to try to vote in federal elections, because they can end up in jail and if they are in the country illegally they can be deported.
How do election officials ensure there is no voter fraud?
States set election policy laws, such as mail-in ballots or photo ID requirements to vote. Local election officials handle the day-to-day tasks of managing elections. Their offices send ballots to voters, train volunteers to register voters at local precincts and monitor machines at polling places.
There is no evidence that any state allows a non-citizen to participate in federal elections, Carolina López said. She is the executive director of the Association of Large Electoral Jurisdictions (PLEJ), a national nonpartisan group that supports electoral jurisdictions.
López, who also job from 2006 to 2017 as executive supervisor of elections in Miami-Dade County, said that if the state cannot verify that the person is a citizen and registered to vote, they will not be given a ballot. This applies when a person goes to vote in person or requests a ballot by mail.
Roberto Rodríguez, the deputy director of the Miami-Dade County elections department, detailed to PolitiFact how his county ensures that electoral fraud is not committed.
For example, he said the county keeps paper ballots in case there are questions or if a recount needs to be done. Voting machines are not connected to the internet, so bad actors could not hack them, or illegally infiltrate them, to change votes. After the election, the county audits the results to make sure they were tabulated correctly.
Experts said the electoral process is safe and eligible people should not be afraid to vote.
“In my 10 years of administration in Miami-Dade County, in the state of Florida, I have seen that there are processes, there are regulations, there are strict federal, state, and local regulations, to guarantee that the elections will always be accurate, they will always be fair, they will always be safe,” López said. “There is no evidence of widespread fraud due to votes in the US elections.”
Read more PolitiFact reports in Spanish.
