Trump says 278,000 noncitizens are on voting rolls. Experts say that's wrong.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

The claim came as the Trump administration vowed to withhold funding from states that don’t participate in federal programs purporting to secure elections.

www.washingtonpost.com/politi...

— Daniel Johnson (@danieljohnson.bsky.social) 2026-07-17T21:43:31.431Z

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/07/17/trump-said-278000-noncitizens-are-voting-rolls-experts-say-thats-wrong

According to Trump and Mullin, about 278,000 noncitizens are unlawfully registered to vote in federal elections in a number of states where they said the rolls were reviewed. They said 250,000 of those people were in just four states: Nevada, California, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Their assessment did not include all states.

The president’s claim suggests that noncitizens who cast ballots could unlawfully swing election results in a particularly tight federal race.

But a review of public documents and interviews with government officials and election experts shows that the figure is significantly overstated and that officials have struggled to find instances of voter fraud by noncitizens to back the president’s assertions. Assessments by government officials and outside election experts have repeatedly concluded that noncitizens represent a miniscule number of voters.

“We can affirm that on its face, we refute these claims. These numbers are wildly speculative at best and the Department of Homeland Security hasn’t shared anything that backs it up,” Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar said in a statement.......

But relying on publicly available data means that federal officials were probably not using verified and up-to-date information. States often intentionally publish incomplete identifying information on their public voting rolls — such as an incomplete birthday — to protect people’s privacy.....

Election experts said that using this public data would result in confusing the identities of people who have common or similar names. In many instances, naturalized citizens remain improperly labeled as noncitizens in government databases, experts said.

Even as the administration is touting the SAVE database, contradictory court rulings muddled the picture on whether states can participate.

In June, a federal judge in D.C. halted full use of the database when she found some citizens had wrongly had their voter registrations revoked because officials were relying on a system they “knew to be unreliable.” The D.C. Circuit is considering an appeal of that ruling.

[johnnyfins]

1. How can someone be an "expert" when

[Redacted] is smarter than them?

:/:/:/:/

[ProfessorGAC]

2. The Operative Phrase Here Is...

...speculative at best and the Department of Homeland Security hasn’t shared anything that backs it up,” ...

The translation is that DHS made it up. Of course they haven't shared anything to back it up. The data doesn't exist.

[surfered]

3. That's BS. Fewer non-citizens have voted illegally over the last 20 years...

..than either the number of women accusing Trump of sexual assault or the number of felonies Trump was convicted of.

[no_hypocrisy]

4. While I dispute the number given,

I find Thom Hartmann's analysis to be credible. On states where you can register to vote when you apply for a drivers license, there's a box to check off if you wish to simultaneously register to vote. He surmises that there is a certain segment of population that isn't familiar with English or with the form that has checked off the box arbitrarily, without understanding what it means. And that inadvertently adds non-naturalized immigrants to the voter rolls. Not that they show up to vote; it's just that their names are listed as voters.

[Raftergirl]

5. A huge amount of citizens don't vote and people think non citizens are going to vote? It's beyond stupid.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

6. trump lied when he said there are 280,000 noncitizens registered to vote in 4 states

Link to tweet