1.5 to 2.7 million illegal immigrants likely to vote in 2024: experts

Are you planning to vote in November? You’re not alone. Experts estimate that between 1.5 and 2.7 million illegal immigrants are likely to vote in the 2024 election, which could affect the race from dog catcher to president of the United States.

The historic flood of illegal immigrants during the Biden-Harris administration has also filled the voter rolls, thanks to controversial federal legislation passed by the Clinton administration. If illegal immigrants and other noncitizens vote in the same proportions as in previous U.S. elections, the number will be anywhere from 1.5 million to nearly 3 million votes.

“A 2014 academic journal found that 6.4% of noncitizens voted in 2008,” Kerri Toloczko, executive director of Election Integrity Network and senior advisor to the Only Citizens Vote Coalition, told The Washington Stand. “There are about 24 million noncitizens in the U.S. right now. If they were to vote only If they were to achieve the same percentage of 6.4% this year as in 2008, they would be good for 1.5 million votes.”

That massive number of illegal votes may just be the tip of the iceberg. “Based on increased non-citizen activity at state DMVs and the work of left-wing voter registration activists, this 6.4% could be much higher than it was in 2008. We could be looking at over two million illegal non-citizen votes,” she told TWS.

Her estimate largely aligns with an earlier study that found that 2.7 million non-citizens are likely to vote in the 2024 election.

The author of that study — James D. Agresti, the president and co-founder of the think tank and fact-checking website Just Facts — confirmed to TWS that “the most comprehensive, transparent, and rigorous study on this issue has found that approximately two to five million noncitizens are illegally registered to vote, and aggressive efforts to debunk the study have failed miserably.”

Opponents of election integrity laws downplay the problem by claiming that it is already illegal for foreigners to vote in U.S. elections. But unlike other perceived threats, the problem has real power to undermine our democracy, election experts say. “The left likes to use phrases like, ‘It’s not that widespread,’” Toloczko noted. “But how many does a moral relativist who isn’t interested in upholding the law think is too many?” And “if every illegitimate vote cancels out the vote of a legitimate citizen, how many of those are acceptable?”

Would two million illegal votes be “enough to potentially make a difference in the House and Senate races, and even the presidency?” she asked. “I can guess.”

Agresti noted that “the claim that non-citizens rarely vote is based on studies with absurd methodologies. For example, they measure the prevalence of this crime by simply counting convictions for it.”

This is “ridiculous,” Agresti told TWS, comparing the statistic to measuring the number of Americans who use illegal narcotics “based on convictions and sentences. The same goes for any other law that is not strictly enforced, like driving above the speed limit.”

The House of Representatives released a 22-page report in June documenting illegal immigrants voting in the United States. Under current law, noncitizens are allowed to vote in 17 cities in California, Maryland and Vermont, as well as the District of Columbia. Although noncitizens are only allowed to vote in local elections, “errors” have been reported.

Toloczko highlighted documented cases of foreigners voting illegally in U.S. elections. “The federal government recently indicted a group of non-citizens from 15 different countries on federal voting charges. Texas recently purged 6,500 non-citizens from its voter rolls — 30% of whom had voting records,” Toloczko told TWS, echoing similar sentiments on The Stream.

Illegal immigration affects U.S. elections in a second way: Counting noncitizens in the U.S. census redistributes eight congressional seats and, with them, their Electoral College votes that choose the president, a team of immigration scholars found. America’s teeming illegal immigrant population adds congressional seats to California (3), Texas (2), New York, New Jersey and Florida (one each); and takes seats away from Alabama, Idaho, Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota, Ohio, Rhode Island and West Virginia (one each). Illegal immigrants alone shift one seat from Ohio, Alabama and Minnesota to California, Texas and New York, the study by the Center for Immigration Studies found.

House Republicans have attempted to address the problem by passing a number of border security and election integrity measures, including the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act (HR 8281), which requires local election officials to verify a person’s U.S. citizenship before registering that person to vote. The bill passed the House in July.

“States are not allowed to require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship” thanks to the courts’ interpretations of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) told the Fox Business show “Mornings with Maria” on Tuesday. “Democrats who vote against it are showing what they’re really doing: They want non-citizens to vote and rig our elections.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) called the bill’s passage “a generation-defining moment.” Johnson supports pairing the election integrity bill with a resolution that must be passed to keep the government funded beyond the Sept. 30 fiscal year and avoid a government shutdown. However, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) declared the bill dead upon arrival in the Senate. “What’s he afraid of?” Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) asked Tuesday morning on Fox Business.

The underlying numbers behind the 1.5 million to 2.7 million noncitizen votes may understate the scale of the problem. Yale University researchers estimated the U.S. illegal immigrant population at 16 million to 29 million in 2016, before the Biden-Harris administration implemented border policies that have seen record-breaking levels of illegal immigration every year so far. While officials have channeled illegal immigration to ports of entry and other tools like the CBP One app that reduce paper entries during this presidential election year, experts say the total number of immigrants entering the U.S. has remained the same or increased.

Americans are increasingly struggling under the pressure of illegal immigration. Video footage has shown members of the Venezuelan transnational criminal organization Tren de Aragua (TdA) rampaging through the Denver, Colorado, suburb of Aurora, where they are said to be terrorizing and extorting residents of multiple apartment buildings.

The Biden-Harris administration has packed about 20,000 Haitians into the city of Springfield, Ohio — a city of 58,000 Americans — where they have driven up housing prices, undercut American workers for jobs and caused a series of car crashes. The problem has reportedly spread to the nearby city of Tremont. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) recently sent the city millions of dollars and deployed a team of Ohio State Highway Patrol officers to help get the deadly traffic problem under control. While mainstream media outlets have tried to blame a spate of reported bomb threats against schools and other institutions in Springfield on J.D. Vance and other politicians who have highlighted the city’s plight, DeWine has verified that officials determined that all 33 threats were “hoaxes” originating from overseas.

Mayors of Aurora and Tremont say they were not consulted about resettling these foreigners in their cities.

An Axios/Harris poll released in April found that a majority of Americans support the mass deportation of illegal immigrants back to their home countries. Overall, 51% of U.S. citizens support the Trump-endorsed policy of deportations, including about half (46%) of all registered independents. A surprisingly high 42% of Democrats support mass deportations, likely fueled by the growing number of African Americans — who voted for the Democratic presidential candidate a whopping nine out of 10 times — who see their neighborhoods affected by growing populations of illegal immigrants, particularly in sanctuary cities. Democratic leaders in their cities often divert tax dollars and deny taxpayer-funded services to U.S. citizens, in favor of illegal immigrants.

As the government funding drama plays out in the U.S. Capitol, America First Legal has filed numerous lawsuits arguing that two provisions of federal law — 8 U.S.C. § 1373(c) and 8 U.S.C. § 1644 — already allow state and local officials to obtain information about applicants’ citizenship status before they register.

“The reason (Democrats) have that wide open border is so they can get as many illegals in here as possible and get them to vote, so they can dominate the American vote,” Rep. Mike Ezell (R-Miss.) told “Washington Watch” in July. “They want to dominate the House, the Senate, the White House.”

“They want to be elected at all costs,” Ezell said.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is a senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

House of Representatives passes bill to protect US sovereignty

Harris makes few policy proposals during rare one-on-one interview

Taylor Swift’s support for Kamala Harris had minimal impact, poll finds

Democratic senator warns report on attempted assassination of Trump ‘will absolutely shock the American people’

Reports Confirm Haitian Migrants Eating Geese and Cats

It took just 20 seconds for a Black immigrant caller to unravel Charlamagne’s defense of Harris’ role in the border crisis

EDITOR’S NOTE: This Washington Tribune column republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is the Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, DC and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.