Trump administration threatens four states over alleged non-citizen voters

The Department of Homeland Security threatened California, New Jersey, Nevada and Pennsylvania with fines, criminal charges and possible funding cuts if they did not check their voter rolls for non-citizens. The administration tied the demand to more than 250,000 potential non-citizens, over 256,000 in Fox News's count, but the claim centered on registration data, not proven ballots cast illegally.

Markwayne Mullin said the administration would withhold funding from states that did not follow its election security directives. The escalation came as Donald Trump prepared to address the nation and after DHS found thousands of non-citizens on voter rolls in the four states. The administration has not publicly shown that the entries it identified translated into votes cast by non-citizens.

State officials and election experts have pushed back on the broader claim that non-citizen voting is widespread. Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt, who has previously exposed some noncitizen voting cases, said the larger claims were overstated. Pennsylvania’s official election page says there is no evidence of widespread mail voting fraud in the state. The Brennan Center for Justice is pressing state officials to provide sensitive voter information, and it has created a tracker for Justice Department requests for voter data.

Past state and private reviews have found noncitizen voting to be rare in U.S. elections, and the Center for Election Innovation & Research issued a July update reviewing claims of noncitizen registrants and voters.