A way to challenge the election? With no evidence, Trump says noncitizens are voting
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
If things are not going former President Donald Trump's way on election night, he's already given us a pretty good idea of how he may contest the results. Trump and his allies have zeroed in on the baseless claim that Democrats are encouraging newly arrived migrants to vote for them in the 2024 election. There is no evidence of a plot like this. And on top of that, it is illegal and incredibly rare for noncitizens to vote in federal races. Still, this narrative has taken off this year. Joining me now to talk about it and explain why are NPR's voting correspondent Miles Parks - hey, Miles...
MILES PARKS, BYLINE: Hey there.
DETROW: ...And reporter Jude Joffe-Block, who covers how false narratives are affecting our democracy. Jude, thanks for joining us.
JUDE JOFFE-BLOCK, BYLINE: Hello.
DETROW: Miles, let me start with you, though. It feels like this claim about noncitizens voting is suddenly everywhere. What happened?
PARKS: So just to be clear, this is a myth that has been floating around American politics since the 1800s, and experts say it usually spikes during periods of nonwhite immigration due to fears about how that influx of immigrants is going to impact the country. But election officials all over the country say, this summer, it became clear that this would be the No. 1 false narrative leading up to the election. I talked about that recently with Lisa Tollefson, who runs elections in Rock County, Wisconsin.
LISA TOLLEFSON: The first time I started seeing it, I was starting to do poll worker trainings - June, July, getting ready for August's election - where they were actually asking those questions during my poll worker training.
PARKS: This is an example of how a false idea can get mainstreamed if enough authoritative voices all center on it. It also feels like one of the clearest examples of how Trump has taken hold of the Republican Party right now.
DETROW: Yeah.
PARKS: He has been saying, you know, some version of this lie for years now, but now we are seeing a number of Republican officials at all levels of government embrace it as well. For congressional Republicans, for instance, it became a top legislative priority this year.
DETROW: Jude, can you connect the dots for us - from officials like Trump saying this to how it's reaching voters and becoming so pervasive?
JOFFE-BLOCK: Yeah, and if you consume conservative media, this narrative is unavoidable. And then you add in that the - an owner of a social media company, Elon Musk, is frequently putting out misleading claims about it on his platform, and it all adds up to Americans being bombarded with this idea that noncitizens are voting over and over again.
DETROW: Jude, can we quantify just how much this rhetoric has changed public opinion on this?
JOFFE-BLOCK: So an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll came out a couple weeks ago, and it asked voters about this. And slightly more than half, 52%, said they were concerned about noncitizens voting in the election. And when you break it down by party, 81% of Republicans were concerned. One of those voters is Greg Gutzki. He's a Republican in Colorado, and he told me he thinks noncitizen voting is a bigger concern this year compared to previous elections because of the spike in border crossings that happened earlier in the Biden administration.
GREG GUTZKI: This is part of the agenda - to flood the nation with people that will ultimately vote Democratic and not be citizens and vote in our election because the people who let them in there - it's kind of like a payback.
JOFFE-BLOCK: Now, there isn't evidence that there's a plot to get recent border crossers to vote. Some voters I spoke to didn't reference that conspiracy, but they were still concerned about mistakes or data breaches that could lead to ineligible voters like noncitizens participating. I should say that past audits and studies have shown that noncitizen voting is incredibly rare. Noncitizens who try to vote in federal or state races are risking serious penalties, like prison or deportation, which are pretty strong deterrents.
DETROW: Yeah. Miles, what are the implications of this rhetoric if a large number of Americans really do believe these narratives heading into the election?
PARKS: This is going to be something we're watching really closely as voting continues for the next couple weeks, specifically in how this narrative impacts voters of color and naturalized citizens. I talked about that recently with the lead election official in Georgia's Bartow County. His name is Joseph Kirk. And he told me he's worried about it.
JOSEPH KIRK: People who may have an accent or maybe, you know, different color skin - these are voters like everybody else.
PARKS: He said he's concerned specifically that either these voters are going to be afraid to vote or that when they do show up to vote at the polls, that there could be some sort of confrontation or issue with other voters.
JOFFE-BLOCK: And we're already seeing real-world impacts of the narrative. So there have been conservative efforts targeting state voter rolls, and we've seen those efforts ensnaring U.S. citizens, which is jeopardizing their ability to vote in this election. Trump-aligned groups have already filed lawsuits in various states over the issue of alleged noncitizens on the voter rolls, and those suits not only are putting exaggerated claims in the headlines. They also could be potentially revived after the election to challenge the results if Trump loses.
DETROW: That is NPR's Jude Joffe-Block and Miles Parks. Thanks to both of you.
PARKS: Thanks, Scott.
JOFFE-BLOCK: Thank you.
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