{"id":47257,"date":"2026-03-19T12:54:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T19:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=47257"},"modified":"2026-03-19T12:54:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T19:54:12","slug":"what-are-the-odds-of-a-noncitizen-voting-were-glad-you-asked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2026\/03\/19\/what-are-the-odds-of-a-noncitizen-voting-were-glad-you-asked\/","title":{"rendered":"What Are the Odds of a Noncitizen Voting? We\u2019re Glad You Asked"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\u201cI voted\u201d sticker, location unknown, November 4, 2025. Photo credit: John \/ Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Elections<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Klaus Marre<\/a>\u00a003\/17\/26 (whowhatwhy.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Republicans want Americans to believe that the threat of noncitizens voting is so great that fighting it justifies potentially disenfranchising millions of eligible voters who do not have a birth certificate or a passport. So we crunched the numbers to see if they are right.\u00a0<\/em><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the Senate taking up the GOP voter suppression bill that is Donald Trump\u2019s top legislative priority, we thought it would be good to take a closer look at the reason why Republicans claim that this legislation is needed: the supposed scourge of noncitizens voting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People familiar with the debate know that it isn\u2019t much of a problem at all. That\u2019s because it is illegal for non-Americans to vote in federal elections, and since the upside of doing so, i.e., casting one additional ballot among tens of millions of others, stands in no relation to the downside, i.e., imprisonment and deportation, hardly anybody does it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How rare is it that somebody commits this most pointless of crimes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are so glad you asked! Let\u2019s take a look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Including the 2000 presidential election, which is a great reference point not only because it\u2019s a quarter century in the past but also because it was decided by 537 votes* and therefore any small factor could have made a huge difference, Americans have cast about 1.5 billion ballots in federal elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the conservative Heritage Foundation, aka \u201cthe Project 2025 guys,\u201d aka \u201ca bunch of guys who support voter suppression and are therefore really<\/em> intent on finding evidence that noncitizens voting is a widespread problem,\u201d exactly 100 aliens<\/a> have been caught committing voter fraud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, according to these numbers, one noncitizen is caught trying to vote illegally for every 15,000,000 votes cast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or, to put it differently, if you wanted to randomly pick out a non-American at a polling place, you\u2019d have a 1 in 15 million chance to be successful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those aren\u2019t great odds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In fact, here are a few things that are more likely to happen than that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n