The White House wants voter rolls in dozens of states cleaned up ahead of the Nov. 3 midterms after tens of thousands of non-citizens were found to have been registered and hundreds to have cast ballots — with dozens now being prosecuted.
The Department of Homeland Security obtained voter rolls from at least 47 states for review under the Trump administration’s “Unlawful Voter Initiative,” Reuters reported Thursday, but the process is not going fast enough for some officials.
One DHS official, in a Sept. 1 email obtained by the wire service, “offered to raise with the WH COS if we can’t get forward progress,” referring to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
Prosecutors are also charging non-citizens with having illegally voted in past federal elections, including in critical swing states like Pennsylvania.
President Trump has repeatedly claimed that his 2020 election loss was a result of voter fraud. After returning to the White House, he pushed an executive action to tighten mail-in balloting rules, which was blocked by the courts, and asked Congress to pass legislation strengthening voter ID requirements — which it has so far failed to do.
In a July speech at the White House, Trump also accused China of illegally acquiring voter information on 220 million Americans and engaging in “other election-related activities to undermine my first administration and our 2020 campaign.”
On Wednesday, Reuters reported that as many as 30,000 non-citizens had been added to voter rolls since 2000 as a result of software glitches and errors stemming from the automatic registration of illegal aliens who apply for state driver’s licenses.
“The real story here is after decades of the media denying that non-citizens register and vote in our elections, they are finally being forced to admit after a flurry of recent arrests nationwide that it does happen,” said White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis.
“Democrats must stop refusing to pass the SAVE America Act—commonsense legislation that ensures Americans, and Americans only, decide our elections,” she added.
The Post has also reported on how almost every US state has been automatically registering people to vote at DMVs and welfare offices — without demanding proof of citizenship — for decades.
Republicans in Congress have sought to close that loophole by passing the SAVE America Act, only for Senate Democrats to block the legislation.
But the Trump administration’s crackdown has since forced some Democratic states to acknowledge non-citizens have been able to register to vote and illegally cast ballots.
On July 21, New Jersey Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill admitted that 6,600 non-citizens were found on Garden State voter rolls and that roughly 400 had illegally cast ballots in elections between June 2023 and June 2024.
Project Civica, a non-partisan government accountability organization, has indicated that more than 10,000 non-citizens could be registered to vote in New York.
California may have as many as 35,152 non-citizens on its voter rolls, according to a preliminary DHS review first reported by Fox News.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin cited the review in a July letter noting that 190,832 non-citizens may currently be registered to vote in California, New Jersey, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
In total, the DHS review assessed that 278,000 non-citizens were registered to vote nationwide, according to the White House. DHS has never publicized the full data from its review.
According to Reuters, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and other DHS subagencies, as well as the State Department and Social Security Administration, have been working to match the voter rolls with information from other federal databases.
DHS at times has had to purchase information from data brokers in order to fill in gaps such as a missing birthdate, the outlet noted, citing the Sept. 1 email.
Federal prosecutors have charged at least 149 illegal aliens with unlawfully voting in elections since 1996, per Reuters, with 20 of those cases having been filed during Trump’s second term.
