Hundreds of citizens wrongly stripped of voting rights in botched effort to legitimize Trump's conspiracy theory

Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen testifies during a hearing before the Senate Rules and Administration Committee on March 12, 2024, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

One of the central narratives that former President Donald Trump and his allies are pushing is that Democrats are planning to steal the election by using undocumented immigrants to pad their vote totals. It is an absurd claim rooted in a white nationalist conspiracy theory.

It is illegal for undocumented immigrants to vote, and data shows it almost never happens. A database maintained by the right-wing Heritage Foundation found "fewer than 100 examples of non-citizens voting between 2002 and 2022, amid more than 1 billion lawfully cast ballots." 

Nevertheless, prominent Republican election officials are using their power to legitimize these concerns by purging allegedly undocumented immigrants from the voting rolls. Even if it is an extremely rare occurrence, what's the harm?

The answer to that question is playing out in Alabama. On August 13, 2024, Secretary of State Wes Allen (R) announced that he was taking steps "to ensure that Alabama has the cleanest and most accurate voter file in the country." Specifically, Allen said he had "identified 3,251 individuals who are registered to vote in Alabama who have been issued noncitizen identification numbers by the Department of Homeland Security" and would "immediately inactivate" their registrations. 

Allen explicitly linked his effort to the national discourse on non-citizen voting. “I have been clear that I will not tolerate the participation of noncitizens in our elections,” Allen said. “I have even gone so far as to testify before a United States Senate Committee regarding the importance of this issue."

There was just one problem: Hundreds of people on Allen's list were American citizens who are eligible to vote. According to a lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice on September 27, at least "717 of the 3,251 individuals" targeted by Allen were U.S. citizens eligible to vote. The total number could be far higher. The 717 people who have had their voting rights restored in Alabama submitted "paperwork that includes confirmation of U.S. citizenship." 

How did Allen get things so wrong? He inactivated voter registrations based on a list of people who had received a driver's license or ID Card from the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency as a foreign national. But these cards are valid for up to 8 years. And Alabama does not require newly naturalized citizens to get a new driver's license or ID until their old card expires. So, Allen falsely categorized people who had been US citizens for years as non-citizens. 

Only 106 of the individuals whose registrations were inactivated have confirmed they are not eligible to vote in Alabama — which does not necessarily mean they are non-citizens. Some people, for example, may have moved out of state. As of September 18, 2,428 individuals targeted by Allen had not responded at all. 

The Department of Justice is suing because federal law prohibits the systematic removal of voters from registration lists within 90 days of an election. The purpose of the provision is to avoid exactly what is happening in Alabama. These efforts can be error-prone, and removing voters so close to election day does not provide adequate time to fix problems. 

Nevertheless, in an effort to substantiate false claims of rampant voter fraud by undocumented immigrants, Republicans around the country are seeking last-minute voter purges. 

Conservative groups push for other states to follow Alabama’s lead

In several swing states, lawsuits have been filed by conservative groups and individual voters to pressure state election officials to purge purported non-citizens.

In Nevada, the RNC, the Nevada Republican Party, and the Trump campaign are suing Nevada’s Secretary of State for driver's license data to remove over 6,000 purported non-citizen voters. The RNC and Trump campaign are basing their case on a document they obtained from December 2020 that listed over 100,000 people who in the last five years presented immigration documents when applying for a driver's license or identification card. On that list, the plaintiffs allege that over 6,000 names and addresses match those of active voters in the state. 

If Nevada were to use this list to cancel voter registrations, it would pose the same problems in the Alabama case. If a person applied for a driver’s license between 2015 and 2020, it does not mean that they have not been naturalized since then. 

The case was filed on September 12 and is still pending. A similar case has been filed in Wisconsin.

In North Carolina, the RNC and the North Carolina Republican Party are suing the state election authority for allegedly not using data from the court system to purge voters. Filed on August 22, the case alleges that state election officials are not enforcing a law enacted in July. The law requires county court clerks to notify the state board of elections whenever an individual is excused from jury duty because they are not a citizen.

In addition to the cases in Nevada, Wisconsin, and North Carolina, similar lawsuits have been filed in Arizona and Vermont to purge voter rolls of potential non-citizens. Additionally, dozens of lawsuits have been filed across swing states to challenge voter roll maintenance practices more generally — many of them being filed by conservative organizations.