The myth that voting by non-U.S. citizens is rapidly increasing as a trend of disinformation

Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene added to the false narrative, warning that Democrats were “trying to steal the election with illegal votes.”

“This is why there is so much (Social Security Number) voter registration in major states, allowing immigrants to obtain SSNs without citizenship,” she wrote on April 16. (formerly Twitter).

“This is why the Biden administration is keeping the border open.”

A study by the nonprofit Brennan Center found that 0.0001 percent of ballots cast by noncitizens in 2016 were suspected of being cast by non-citizens (although this has not been proven).

Approximately 3.2 million unimmigrant residents lived in the United States in 2019, according to data reported by the Congressional Research Service (archived here).

The bipartisan government agency also estimates that there will be up to 11.4 million unauthorized individuals and 12.9 million legal permanent residents in the country in 2022.

It is already illegal for these groups to join the roughly 161 million Americans who are registered to vote in federal elections (archive here), but President Trump and Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson recently , enacted another law targeting the voting of non-citizens.

“We cannot wait for widespread fraud to occur,” Johnson said at a press conference in mid-April at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, a historically election battleground state. Told.

“In particular, the threat of fraud increases with every increase in the number of illegal immigrants crossing the border.”

“Exploiting anxiety”

Experts say a surge in misinformation about immigrant voting in recent years along the U.S.-Mexico border is partly to blame.

“The most important change is the level of intensity of the crisis at the border and how that is being used to create rumors,” said Mert Bayar of the University of Washington Center for Freedom of Information (archived here). .

Ethan Porter, an associate professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University (archive here), said some politicians may think they can “leverage anxiety and fear to mobilize supporters” about illegal immigration. He added that he could not.

“Turnout is difficult, but stirring up those fears is one way to make it easier,” he said.

False claims that noncitizens influence the outcome of U.S. elections have surfaced before.

In 2016, President Trump blamed illegal immigration in part for his loss to Biden in the popular vote. A commission he established to investigate the issue was later disbanded without finding any instances of non-citizens voting.

What’s different this cycle, says Emerson Brooking of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Institute (archived here), is that “the disinformation apparatus is more sophisticated,” making it easier for people to access their data. It has become easier to disseminate persuasive information by taking it out of context. An elaborate lie.

Preparation for fraud

Analysts say reports of non-citizen votes set the stage for future fraud allegations.

“Pushing forward these claims is tantamount to an ‘I win, heads lose’ approach to elections,” Porter said. “Either my side won despite the effects of voter fraud, or my side lost because of voter fraud.”

But it could also have unintended consequences for Republicans.

“Rumors and conspiracy theories of election fraud can actually have a demobilizing effect on people who believe them because they don’t want to participate in elections because they don’t trust the system,” Bayal said. Ta.

Multiple experts told AFP that the real threat of voter fraud disinformation is plummeting confidence in the US election system.

Brooking said such statements are “opportunistic” and that if President Trump wins by a landslide in November, anyone promoting the cause “will forget overnight.” added.

With about six months until voting day, he said “we are only seeing the first drop” of misinformation and warned that it would soon become “a tidal wave” of disinformation.