Trump and Johnson mislead again about election integrity.


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The Brennan Center is part of a broad coalition tracking election-related disinformation

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. A big rumor we’ve identified rattling around the murkier regions of social media is that hordes of noncitizens are voting.

That’s false. A lie. An urban myth. But it has also, somehow, become the glue that’s holding together disparate wings of the Republican Party. And it may be the basis for a major new piece of misguided legislation.

On Friday, House Speaker Mike Johnson stood with former President Trump at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago. They decried what they claimed is a contagion of noncitizen voting. And they announced new legislation — details to come — that could lead to the purging of hundreds of thousands of voters from the rolls. It’s the Big Lie put into legislative language.

Yes, Johnson clings to his job only by a few ornery votes, but he is still the actual speaker of the actual House of Representatives.  And yes, Donald Trump held this press conference on the way to the first of his four scheduled criminal trials.

Still, we have to take this both literally and seriously. Never before in American history has a sitting speaker of the House done so much to denigrate the integrity of American elections.

For starters, let’s say it as clearly as possible: it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote. They are prohibited from voting in federal elections and state elections in every state. It is very, very illegal. There are strong penalties in the law. And states have strong systems in place to ensure that noncitizens don’t vote — whether on purpose or, as may be more likely, because they are misinformed about their eligibility.

Those existing legal protections are one reason why, as research from the Brennan Center and numerous other experts confirm, voting by noncitizens is vanishingly rare. In 2017, my colleagues Myrna Pérez (now a federal appeals court judge) and Douglas Keith conducted an exhaustive study of 42 jurisdictions

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in the 2016 general election. They found that “election officials in those places, who oversaw the tabulation of 23.5 million votes, referred only an estimated 30 incidents of suspected noncitizen voting for further investigation or prosecution. In other words, even suspected — not proven — noncitizen votes accounted for just 0.0001 percent of the votes cast.”

Don’t take our word for it. The libertarian Cato Institute, funded by the Koch brothers, confirms: “Noncitizens Don’t Illegally Vote in Detectable Numbers

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.”

That makes sense. As my colleague Sean Morales-Doyle asks

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, “Would you risk everything — your freedom, your life in the United States, your ability to be near your family — just to cast a single ballot?”

All of which makes what we know about the proposed legislation that much more appalling.

Johnson said the plan was to require Americans to show proof of citizenship to register to vote. In practice, this means that voters would have to produce a birth certificate or a passport to register. But there are millions of American citizens who are eligible to vote and don’t have ready access to those documents. (This includes Republicans as well as Democrats, it’s worth noting. Though not surprisingly, these restrictions would disproportionately affect poorer citizens, women, and likely voters of color.)

It would be DOA in the Senate, for now, so the goal is not to write this dreadful idea into law. Rather, it is to set the stage for election denial should Trump lose the election later this year. After all, in 2016, Trump claimed he had really won the popular vote if you “deduct” three to five million “illegal” voters. In 2020, of course, he insisted falsely that the election was stolen. Now he is laying down that predicate again — this time, aided by a constitutional officer who first worked with the defeated president as an election denier in 2020.

The lie about noncitizen voting is also a distraction, an attempt to shift the terms of the campaign away from real issues and real challenges. It should be rejected, not just by Congress, but by every journalist and citizen. It’s a cynical untruth, and it should be chased from the public square.





AI-Backed Threats to Voting Rights

Ahead of the 2024 New Hampshire primary, robocalls that used voice-cloning artificial intelligence technology to impersonate President Biden urged voters not to cast their ballots. It marked the beginning of a new era in voter suppression. The final installment in our AI and Democracy series

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explains how AI tools can be used to deceive voters and add more burdens to the right to vote, and it puts forth solutions to mitigate these risks. Read more

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Novel Voting Protections in California

A California State Assembly committee last week advanced the Peace Act, a pioneering bill that aims to bolster legal guardrails against intimidation for voters, election officials, and election workers. The bill, which is based on model legislation developed by the Brennan Center and Giffords Law Center, would strengthen defenses against intimidation at every stage of the voting process, deter individuals from bringing guns to any voting location, and empower voters and people running elections to sue in state court if they are victims of intimidation. If passed, this critical legislation would help “ensure that every eligible voter can cast a ballot without fear,” Kendall Karson writes. READ MORE

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Patriot Act 2.0

Last week, the House not only failed to close a legal loophole that has been used to circumvent Fourth Amendment protections and spy on Americans, it voted to massively expand the government’s warrantless surveillance powers. An amendment to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act would force ordinary businesses to give the National Security Agency access to their Wi-Fi equipment in order to monitor users’ communications. The legislation is a mistake that will leave the public vulnerable to abusive government spying, Elizabeth Goitein warns, adding, “It must be fixed in the Senate, however long it takes.” Read more

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Why State Constitutional Law Matters

No law school requires students to learn about state constitutional law, and few offer electives on the subject. This may leave new lawyers unaware of how state constitutions can offer crucial paths to protecting rights in areas from reproductive freedom to gerrymandering. Fortunately, there is a simple way to address this knowledge gap: constitutional law professors can dedicate a single class session to state constitutions, Rutgers Law professor Katie Eyer argues in State Court Report. READ MORE

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Coming Up

VIRTUAL EVENT: The Failed Experiment of Mass Incarceration

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TOMORROW: Wednesday, April 17, 3–4 p.m. ET



A new book edited by the Brennan Center’s Lauren-Brooke Eisen, Excessive Punishment: How the Justice System Creates Mass Incarceration

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, explores the roots and social costs of mass incarceration, as well as reforms that would prioritize human dignity and restoration over retribution. Join us virtually for a live event moderated by Eisen to hear from several of the book’s contributors on why the U.S. criminal justice system is so punitive and what alternatives could rebalance it. RSVP today

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VIRTUAL EVENT: The High Cost of Public Service

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Tuesday, April 30, 3–4 p.m. ET



While abuse directed at federal officeholders grabs the headlines, a Brennan Center report

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reveals that intimidation aimed at state and local officials is distressingly common. These threats have serious repercussions for representative democracy, as officeholders report being less willing to work on contentious issues like reproductive rights and gun control and reluctant to continue serving. Additionally, intimidation is often targeted at groups already underrepresented in government, such as women and people of color. Join us for a virtual discussion of this alarming trend as well as recommendations to stem the abuse. RSVP today

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Want to keep up with Brennan Center Live events? Subscribe to the events newsletter.

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News

Lauren-Brooke Eisen on excessive punishment in the criminal justice system // WABE

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Douglas Keith on the Arizona Supreme Court’s abortion ban ruling // NEW YORK TIMES

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Sean Morales-Doyle on falsehoods about voter ID // POLITIFACT

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Eliza Sweren-Becker on frivolous challenges to state voter rolls // STATELINE

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Thomas Wolf on Donald Trump’s ahistorical presidential immunity claim // GUARDIAN

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Feedback on this newsletter? Email us at [email protected]

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