Walk into any coffee shop or scroll through social media for five minutes, and you're bound to hear it. People are arguing. They're worried. One of the loudest questions lately is pretty simple: do illegal immigrants vote in U.S. elections?
It’s a heavy topic. Honestly, it’s one of those things where the answer depends entirely on who you ask and how they define "voting." If you’re looking for a simple "yes" or "no," you’re going to be disappointed because the reality is buried under layers of federal law, state-level quirks, and a whole lot of paperwork.
Basically, federal law is clear. Since 1996, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act has made it a literal crime for non-citizens to vote in federal elections. We’re talking about the big ones—President, Congress, the stuff that makes the evening news. If a non-citizen gets caught casting a ballot for a federal office, they face fines, prison time, and—this is the big one—deportation. For someone trying to build a life here, that is a massive, life-altering risk for a single vote.
The difference between federal and local rules
You've probably heard stories about cities allowing non-citizens to vote. That's where things get kinda confusing. While the federal government says "no way" for national races, some local municipalities have their own rules.
Take San Francisco or certain towns in Maryland and Vermont. They’ve decided that if you live in the community, pay local taxes, and your kids go to the schools, you should have a say in the school board or the city council. In these specific, tiny pockets of the country, non-citizens—including those with legal green cards and sometimes those without legal status—can vote, but only on local matters.
It’s a distinct process. They get a separate ballot. It doesn’t have the President on it.
The Brennan Center for Justice has looked into this extensively. They’ve found that the actual number of non-citizens attempting to vote in federal elections is, frankly, minuscule. In a 2016 study of 42 jurisdictions, they found only about 30 suspected cases of non-citizen voting out of 23.5 million votes cast. That’s roughly 0.0001 percent. It’s not exactly a wave.
Why the question of do illegal immigrants vote keeps coming up
Politics. That's the short answer.
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But there’s more to it. There’s a legitimate concern about the "honor system" used in many voter registration forms. In most states, when you sign up to vote, you check a box that says "I am a U.S. citizen." Critics argue this is a loophole. They say that without requiring proof of citizenship—like a birth certificate or a passport—at the moment of registration, the system is wide open for abuse.
Arizona tried to change this. They passed a law requiring proof of citizenship to register. It went all the way to the Supreme Court. The court basically said Arizona can require that proof for state elections, but for federal elections, they have to use the federal form, which doesn't require the same hard evidence upfront.
It creates this weird, two-tiered system. It’s messy.
Real-world checks and balances
States aren't just sitting around. They have systems.
Most states cross-reference their voter rolls with DMV records or Social Security databases. If you check the "non-citizen" box when you get your driver's license but try to register to vote later, the system usually flags it. Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, conducted a massive audit of their rolls recently. They looked at every single person on the list. Out of millions of voters, they found about 1,600 non-citizens who had attempted to register over a period of many years.
Guess how many actually succeeded in voting? Zero.
The system caught them at the registration phase. This is a point that often gets lost in the noise. Registering to vote and actually casting a ballot are two different hurdles. Even if someone slips through the registration crack, the paper trail they leave is a neon sign for immigration authorities. For an undocumented person, voting is essentially handing the government a map to your front door.
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The "Motor Voter" controversy
You know how when you get your license, they ask if you want to register to vote? That’s the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, often called "Motor Voter."
This is where a lot of the "do illegal immigrants vote" anxiety lives. Critics argue that since many states now allow undocumented immigrants to get driver's licenses (for safety and insurance reasons), the DMV might accidentally register them to vote.
It has happened. Not on a massive scale, but clerical errors occur. In 2018, Pennsylvania admitted that a "glitch" allowed thousands of non-citizens to potentially register over several decades. They had to go back and scrub the lists. These are usually administrative screw-ups, not a coordinated conspiracy, but they fuel the fire of public distrust.
What about "Ballot Harvesting"?
This is another term that gets thrown around. It refers to third parties collecting and turning in ballots for other people. While the practice itself is legal in some states and illegal in others, it doesn't change the underlying requirement: the person who signed the ballot must be a citizen. If a non-citizen signs a ballot, that ballot is fraudulent, regardless of who drops it in the box.
Looking at the numbers from experts
If you want the hard data, you look at Heritage Foundation’s database or the findings from the Cato Institute. Interestingly, even groups with very different political leanings often land on similar conclusions regarding the scale.
Heritage maintains a database of election fraud. They’ve documented cases of non-citizen voting, but they are scattered and rare. They usually involve individuals who were confused about their eligibility—like a permanent resident who thought "legal" meant "citizen"—rather than a mass movement of illegal voting.
On the flip side, the Cato Institute points out that the risk-to-reward ratio for an undocumented immigrant is insane.
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- Benefit: 1/150,000,000th of an impact on a presidential election.
- Cost: Deportation, permanent ban from the U.S., and possible jail time.
Most people are just trying to work and stay under the radar.
The 2024 and 2026 shifts
Moving into the 2026 cycle, we are seeing more states push for "Citizenship Voting" amendments to their state constitutions. You’ll see these on the ballot in various places. They are largely symbolic since federal law already bans it, but they are meant to close those local loopholes we talked about earlier.
Kentucky, Missouri, and North Carolina are among the states that have been tightening these definitions. They want to make sure that even if a local city council wants to allow non-citizen voting, the state constitution says "no."
Next Steps for Verifying Election Integrity
If you're concerned about how your local area handles this, or you just want to see the safeguards for yourself, there are a few things you can do right now to get beyond the headlines.
First, look up your state’s Voter List Maintenance procedures. Every state is required by federal law to keep their rolls clean, but some are more transparent about it than others. Search for your Secretary of State’s "Annual Transparency Report." Most states now publish exactly how many people they’ve removed from the rolls and why (e.g., moved out of state, deceased, or non-citizen status).
Second, check the SAVE program (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements). This is a federal database that states can use to verify citizenship status. You can find out if your specific state uses the SAVE database to cross-check its voter registration rolls. If they don't, that’s a specific point of advocacy you can bring to your local representatives.
Finally, if you see something that looks like actual fraud, don't just post it on X. Report it to your local county board of elections. They are legally obligated to investigate, and those investigations create the public record that helps everyone understand what’s actually happening on the ground.