Trump revives disputed claims of Chinese meddling in U.S. elections

President Trump used a primetime speech Thursday to revive claims that China had tried to collect voter data in the United States, but the heavily redacted documents posted by the White House did not back up that accusation. He also repeated the long-disproved claim that noncitizens vote in significant numbers, a charge election-law experts say is unsupported by evidence.

The sharpest divide in Trump’s speech was between foreign data-gathering and the much more serious allegation that votes were actually altered. The records he released did not show compromised vote counts, and Trump offered no concrete evidence that Chinese efforts in 2019 changed any election result. Nevada rejected his claims immediately.

Trump also returned to his broader argument that the 2020 election was stolen from him, a contention he has maintained without evidence for years. Multiple investigations, audits, recounts and court proceedings found no widespread voter fraud that changed the outcome of that election. The gap matters because claims about outside actors seeking information are not the same as proof that ballots were miscounted or that winners were changed.

The noncitizen-voting claim carried the same lack of support. Election specialists and voting-rights groups have said voter fraud by noncitizens is very rare, and the Brennan Center for Justice says extensive research shows fraud is rare overall. The group also warns that repeated false allegations can make it harder for millions of eligible Americans to participate in elections.

The warning reflects a wider concern among election administrators and civil rights advocates who have spent years countering public doubt about the vote. National Public Radio has noted that Trump has for years sowed doubt about the security of American elections, while the NAACP Legal Defense Fund said before the address that it expected him to revive repeatedly disproven conspiracy theories about substantial fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

David Becker, who leads the Center for Election Innovation & Research, has said the nonprofit works with election officials of both parties around the country to support elections voters should trust and do trust. That kind of work stands in direct contrast to Trump’s renewed attempt to blur a narrow question about foreign data collection with the unsupported claim that American vote counts were compromised.