US states may have added more than 30,000 self-declared non-citizens to the nation’s voter rolls since 2000 because of software glitches and clerical errors made while processing their driver’s license and state ID applications, according to official records reviewed by Reuters.
The cases expose weaknesses in voter registration systems across a dozen US states governed by both Democrats and Republicans, but at numbers that experts said were too small relative to the country’s more than 170 million registered voters to impact elections. Reuters was not able to determine how many of these non-citizens actually cast a ballot.
The findings suggest that inadvertent bureaucratic failures, rather than organized efforts to register immigrants illegally, are a major source of non-citizen registrations, and raise questions about whether legislative efforts to require proof of citizenship for voter registration would eliminate the issue.
President Donald Trump and his supporters have claimed, without evidence, that non-citizen voting is widespread and part of an organized conspiracy led by Democrats who hope to retake Congress in November’s midterm elections, and are pushing lawmakers to toughen up voting requirements.
New Jersey announced the most recent high-profile case of errant voter registrations over the summer, saying a technology glitch added about 6,600 non-citizens to voter rolls between June 2023 and June 2024, even though they answered “no” when asked if they were citizens while applying for licenses and IDs.
Bureaucratic errors have also been reported in at least 11 other states – including Republican strongholds like Iowa, Texas and South Dakota – bringing the nationwide figure above 30,000 since 2000, according to the Reuters reporting.
A nationwide tally of such mistakes has not previously been reported.
Reuters used data from the Center for Election Innovation & Research, a non-profit group that tracks claims of non-citizen voter registration and voting, to identify states where self-declared non-citizens were registered. Reuters then verified the numbers with state officials, court records, and local media reports.
The data showed errors occurred in California, Illinois, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Virginia.
The numbers are inexact because state data is often tentative and subject to revision.
Such mistakes are likely a top reason non-citizens make it onto the nation’s voter rolls, according to Don Palmer, a senior legal fellow for election integrity at the conservative Heritage Foundation and former Trump-appointed chair of the US Election Assistance Commission.
“I think that’s the primary issue,” Palmer said. “Driver’s license agencies often make mistakes, and they often are not taking this as seriously as election officials.” He said states also need to do more to verify voter eligibility…..
