Can illegal immigrants really vote in the US election?

Donald Trump and his Republican allies have repeatedly claimed that Democrats are planning to encourage illegal immigrants to vote in US elections.

“Our elections are bad, and a lot of these illegal immigrants are trying to get them to vote,” Trump said during the presidential debate with Kamala Harris.

BBC Verify has identified more than 100 paid ads on Facebook and Instagram posted by Republicans focusing on the issue since early September.

It is illegal for a non-U.S. citizen to vote in a national election, but studies suggest that cases where this actually happens are very rare.

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 prohibits non-citizens – including illegal immigrants – from taking part in federal elections.

The punishment includes one year in prison, a fine and possible deportation.

Every state is required to use a shared registry Form that requires individuals to certify that they are U.S. citizens under penalty of perjury for making false statements, but does not require documentary evidence.

“The first step of having to check a box confirming that you are a citizen in order to register to vote is a huge deterrent for illegal immigrants because it is hugely risky to lie,” says Jasleen Singh, an elections expert at the liberal political think tank Brennan Center for Justice.

In many states, voter rolls are checked against citizenship and immigration authorities, death certificates and postal records to ensure that people who are not citizens, are deceased or live out of state are not registered to vote.

“In the elections there is a list of eligible voters, and if a non-citizen shows up, he is turned away or asked to cast a provisional ballot, which is only accepted if he can show proof of citizenship,” says Prof Ronald Hayduk, voting rights expert from San Francisco State University.

Non-citizens are also not allowed to participate in nationwide elections.

However, some municipalities in California, Maryland, Vermont and Washington DC allow them to vote in certain local elections, such as for school boards.

A number of studies, from both conservative and left-leaning organizations, suggest that cases of illegal immigrants voting in U.S. federal elections are very rare.

An interview by the Brennan Center for Justice interviewed 44 election officials who worked in 12 states during the 2016 election.

It turned out that 23.5 million votes were counted in these states, An estimated 30 suspected non-citizen voting incidents were referred for further investigation.

That’s about 0.0001% of all votes cast.

An analysis of a Database collecting electoral fraud cases Between 1999 and 2023, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group, found 77 cases of non-citizens voting.

A number of other reports, including from the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank, titled “Non-citizens do not vote illegally in verifiable numbers‘, come to similar conclusions.

“According to many sources of evidence, the number of non-citizens voting in elections is very small,” says Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who has written a number of reports on voter fraud.

“It’s not zero, some people slip through the cracks for various reasons, but it’s nowhere near the level that could affect the outcome of an election.”

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, a Republican proposal that would require citizens to prove their citizenship when registering to vote, was defeated in the House of Representatives.

Republican lawmakers continue to push for more citizenship requirements.

“We have a number of states that have conducted audits of their voter rolls and found thousands of non-citizens,” top House Republican Mike Johnson told CNN.

He highlighted Ohio, Pennsylvania and Georgia – three states where polls show a tight race between Trump and Kamala Harris.

In Ohio, a review demanded by Republican officials in the statefound that out of about eight million registered voters, 597 cases were referred for “further review and possible prosecution” for non-citizens who registered to vote.

In Pennsylvania, a glitch with electronic touch screens at state driver’s license centers incorrectly offered non-citizens the opportunity to register to vote when purchasing new or updated driver’s licenses.

This bug was in the system between 2006 and 2017 and has since been fixed.

In 2017 said Pennsylvania state election officials Noncitizen immigrants may have cast 544 of more than 93 million ballots illegally in elections since 2000.

In Georgia, a review of voter rolls in 2022 found that 1,634 people out of about seven million registered voters “had attempted to register to vote” but “could not be verified.”

“Election fraud and illegal immigrant voting are so rare that this myth is intended to sow doubt about election integrity and lay the groundwork for stoking doubt about the election results,” argues Ms. Singh.

BBC Verify has identified 118 paid ads posted on Facebook and Instagram by Republican candidates or Republican caucuses since September 1 that claim widespread voter registration of non-citizens or raise the question of whether non-citizens should be allowed to vote in elections.

The ads we identified were viewed between 7.8 and nine million times across the platforms.

One – which has had more than 2.4 million views – invites users to take part in a poll asking: “Should illegal immigrants be allowed to vote?”

Another ad posted by Congresswoman Ann Wagner with more than 900,000 views asks users to answer the same question.

Additional reporting by Maryam Ahmed.