“Federal databases can be invaluable to states trying to update their voter rolls so long as their limitations are understood,” says Olson. “So part of the Trump plan which requires the sharing of information is positive, even if the second part to require states to treat the database contents as reliable despite their continuing evident gaps and inaccuracies is bad.”
The use of the programme by individual states is voluntary, and from those who have used it recently the number of non-citizens detected has been small.
In Georgia, after an audit of the state’s voter rolls, 432 possible non-citizens were identified, external on its voter rolls over 30 years.
The Department of Homeland Security provided Nevada with a list of 185 names which it claimed identified non-citizens who had been improperly allowed to register to vote, but state officials found that they were all in fact citizens., external
The White House has pointed to a case in New Jersey, where this summer a software glitch in the state’s drivers licensing department registered about 6,600 non-citizens to vote between June 2023 and June 2024. State officials have said fewer than 400 cast ballots and they have all now been removed from the system.
The US Justice Department requested that California doesn’t count 20,000 postal ballots ahead of the midterms from people it claims are “likely non-citizen registrants” – but that request has been rejected by an appeals court.
Out of that 20,000, it has charged 28 people, external who the department says are non-citizens who had illegally registered to vote.
