Rerun

recurring claim

The recurring claim that illegal voting decided an election

You're probably here because of the Aug 2025 rerun. This is the 15th time since 2016 (archive start) this story has run. The previous rerun was Mar 2025.

About this story

Since 2016, claims that illegal votes by noncitizens, dead people or people voting twice changed a US election result have come back again and again. Donald Trump made them about the 2016 popular vote and the 2020 election, and the focus later moved to noncitizen voting ahead of 2024 and the 2026 midterms. Audits, courts, election officials and reviews have repeatedly found illegal voting to be rare and far too small to change a result. Examples are Attorney General Barr's December 2020 statement, an Associated Press (AP) review of six swing states, and Georgia's 2024 voter-roll citizenship audit.

Sources: 1, 2

20162026

Aug 2025 – ongoing Attacks on mail voting and federal demands for voter rolls

  1. On Aug. 18, 2025, Trump posted that he would "lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS" and claimed "MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD." Later that day he said an executive order was being written "to end mail-in ballots because they're corrupt," adding that Democrats want them because "It's the only way they can get elected" (NPR; FactCheck.org). 2. FactCheck.org reported that on Aug. 15 Trump told Fox's Sean Hannity that Vladimir Putin had said "Your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting." Experts told FactCheck.org there is no evidence of widespread mail-voting fraud. Legal experts told NPR that the Constitution gives Congress, not the president, power over federal elections. 3. On Nov. 4, Trump called California's redistricting vote "RIGGED." Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt pointed to ballots cast "in the names of illegal aliens," and PolitiFact rated the claim False. 4. Since September 2025 the Justice Department has sued states for their unredacted voter rolls. ProPublica describes the rolls as a major focus of Trump's push to take federal control over elections and "prosecute alleged noncitizen voters." As of Oct. 16, 2026, ProPublica counted suits against 30 states plus DC, and judges had ruled against the department in all 26 cases decided so far.
  • NPR article
    We're going to start with an executive order that's being written right now by the best lawyers in the country to end mail-in ballots because they're corrupt
  • Al Jazeera article
    The Unconstitutional Redistricting Vote in California is a GIANT SCAM in that the entire process, in particular the Voting itself, is RIGGED
  • stateline.org article
    The U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday expanded its legal campaign to force states to turn over voter lists containing sensitive personal information, suing six more states that have refused to provide the data.

Sources: factcheck.org reliable · NPR reliable · projects.propublica.org needs a second source · stateline.org needs a second source

Correction, 2026-10-23: Changed "central to" to "a major focus of" to match ProPublica's wording.

Mar 2025 Executive order on proof of citizenship

On March 25, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order. It requires documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections and says all ballots must be received by Election Day (AP/PBS). When he signed it, Trump talked about election fraud, said "this will end it, hopefully" (AP/PBS), and repeated his false claim that he won the 2020 election in a "landslide" (Al Jazeera). NPR reported that before the 2024 election, Trump and his allies made baseless claims that noncitizens were voting in large numbers. NPR also said past audits and studies show such cases are "incredibly rare." AP reported that fraud does happen but is "rare, limited in scope and gets prosecuted."

  • Public Broadcasting Service article
    requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections and demanding that all ballots be received by Election Day
  • Al Jazeera article
    We’ve got to straighten out our election
  • NPR article
    Past audits and studies have shown such cases are incredibly rare.

Sources: Public Broadcasting Service reliable · NPR reliable · Al Jazeera reliable

Oct 2024 – Nov 2024 Noncitizen-voting claims just before the 2024 election

On Oct. 23, 2024, Georgia's Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced that an audit found 20 noncitizens among 8.2 million registered voters. Nine of them had voted in the past, most before 2012 according to his office's chief operating officer, Gabriel Sterling. All 20 registrations were canceled and referred to prosecutors, and 156 more were flagged for investigation (AJC, ABC). ABC reported that the result "stands in stark contrast to claims being pushed by some Republicans, including former President Donald Trump," that large numbers of noncitizens would vote in 2024. On Oct. 30, the Supreme Court granted Virginia's emergency request, without giving reasons, to remove about 1,600 voters the state believed were noncitizens. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson would have denied it, and Republican attorneys general from 26 states plus the RNC had filed a brief supporting Virginia (Votebeat). NPR reported that false videos used as evidence for noncitizen voting had spread online, including one federal authorities attributed to a Russian disinformation campaign.

  • ABC News article
    There is no proof that there is this overwhelming number of noncitizens on the rolls.
  • votebeat.org article
    The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that Virginia can remove roughly 1,600 voters it believes to be noncitizens from its rolls before next Tuesday’s election
  • NPR article
    False videos used as purported evidence to bolster the claim spread online last week, including a video on X that federal authorities attributed to a Russian disinformation campaign.

Sources: ajc.com needs a second source · ABC News reliable · votebeat.org needs a second source · NPR reliable

Correction, 2026-10-23: Removed "On Election Day" from the NPR report, since the article text does not state its publication date.

Jul 2024 – Sep 2024 The SAVE Act and the noncitizen-voting push (2024)

On July 10, 2024, Speaker Mike Johnson's office put out a press release titled "Speaker Johnson is Fighting to Prevent Illegal Aliens From Deciding U.S. Elections," and the House passed the SAVE Act 221–198 that evening. Deseret News reported that a report from Johnson's office backing the bill cited a 2014 study. That study estimated 6.4% of noncitizens voted in 2008, which it called "likely enough to change the outcome of the presidential election in North Carolina that year." The same article noted a Brennan Center study that found about 0.0001% of more than 23.5 million votes were suspected noncitizen votes. On Sept 18, 2024, the House rejected Johnson's stopgap bill with the SAVE Act attached, 202–220. Fourteen Republicans joined all but three Democrats in voting no, according to CBS News.

  • mikejohnson.house.gov statement
    Or should we allow foreigners and illegal aliens to decide who sits in the White House and in the People's House and in the Senate?
  • Fox News article
    we will move forward on Wednesday with a vote on the 6-month CR with the SAVE Act attached
  • cbsnews.com article
    If Republicans don't get the SAVE Act, and every ounce of it, they should not agree to a Continuing Resolution in any way, shape, or form

Sources: deseret.com needs a second source · cbsnews.com reliable · Fox News needs a second source · poynter.org needs a second source

May 2022 – Jun 2022 The "2000 Mules" film

The film claimed that paid "mules" illegally collected ballots and put them in drop boxes. PolitiFact describes the claim as 2,000 people delivering 400,000 illegal votes in key states that Joe Biden won. The Post's analysis says D'Souza used those figures "to determine how this network of criminality swung the election to Biden." Barr told Jan. 6 investigators the film did not change his view that the election was not stolen. Georgia investigators said the location data was not evidence of a crime. In late 2024, D'Souza apologized to a Georgia man the film had shown as an example of fraud, saying "inaccurate information" had been given to him.

  • The Washington Post article
    The film has become a central part of Donald Trump’s assertions about the election, with the former president hosting a screening last week at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
  • PolitiFact article
    If you take 2 million cellphones and figure out where they are physically in a big city like Atlanta or wherever, just by definition, you will find many hundreds of them have passed by and spent time in the vicinity of these boxes,
  • knau.org article
    I haven't seen anything since the election that changes my mind on that, including the 2,000 Mules movie,

Sources: The Washington Post reliable · PolitiFact reliable · knau.org needs a second source · NPR reliable · CNN reliable · wral.com needs a second source · NPR reliable

Dec 2021 AP review finds fewer than 475 possible voter-fraud cases in six battleground states

An AP review of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin covered more than 300 local election offices and found fewer than 475 possible voter-fraud cases. Biden won those six states by a combined 311,257 votes out of 25.5 million ballots, so the cases equal 0.15 percent of his margin. AP reported "no collusion intended to rig the voting" and said almost every case was one person acting alone to cast additional ballots, including a Pennsylvania man who voted twice. Asked for comment, Trump said more mail voting had allowed cheating involving "hundreds of thousands of votes." He also said, "I just don't think you should make a fool out of yourself by saying 400 votes."

Sources: Public Broadcasting Service reliable · Public Broadcasting Service reliable · The Hill reliable · theweek.com needs a second source

Correction, 2026-10-23: Corrected the office count: the source says the review covered more than 300 local election offices, and that reporters in five states contacted about 340, not 340 across all six. Removed "often trying to vote twice," which the source does not say; it describes individuals casting additional ballots, with one man who voted twice as an example.

Sep 2021 Cyber Ninjas review of Maricopa County's 2020 ballots is released

Republicans in the Arizona Senate hired Cyber Ninjas to review the 2020 election in Maricopa County. The firm had never audited an election before (NPR, Mediaite). NPR reported that the review's hand count of almost 2.1 million ballots gave Biden 99 more votes than the official count and Trump 261 fewer. The report said there were "no substantial differences" from the official canvass (PolitiFact). The day after, Trump told a rally that Biden "lost in Arizona based on the forensic audit" and claimed there were "17,322 duplicate ballots." PolitiFact rated the first claim Pants on Fire and called the second misleading. In 2022, Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich checked the report's claim that 282 dead people had voted. His office found only one dead voter, and that person's ballot was not counted (NBC News).

  • NPR article
    In fact, the hand recount for Biden exceeded the county's tally by 99 votes, while Trump received 261 fewer votes than the official results.
  • mediaite.com article
    BREAKING: The #azaudit draft report from Cyber Ninjas confirms the county's canvass of the 2020 General Election was accurate
  • PolitiFact article
    He didn't win in Arizona. He lost in Arizona based on the forensic audit.

Sources: NPR reliable · PolitiFact reliable · NBC News reliable · azcapitoltimes.com needs a second source

Nov 2020 – Jan 2021 Fraud claims after the 2020 election

After the 2020 election, the AP reported that the Trump campaign team led by Rudy Giuliani had been "alleging a widespread conspiracy by Democrats to dump millions of illegal votes into the system with no evidence." The AP added that courts had repeatedly dismissed the claims, including Republican judges. On Nov. 11, 2020, the Trump campaign said four dead Georgians' identities were used to vote; county officials told CNN that two of those ballots were not cast. On Dec. 1, Attorney General William Barr told the AP the Justice Department had not seen fraud on a scale that could have changed the outcome. In January 2021, Georgia officials said they had found only two people who "potentially" voted after dying. PolitiFact reported that Biden's 11,779-vote win in Georgia had been confirmed by two recounts, one of them by hand.

  • CNN article
    On Wednesday, the Trump campaign claimed that the identities of four deceased people were used to vote in Georgia.
  • houstonchronicle.com article
    To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election,
  • PolitiFact article
    Instead of the 1,000 people or 5,000 he may have said of dead people voting, we had two.
  • youtube.com video
    on a scale that could have affected

Sources: CNN reliable · NPR reliable · houstonchronicle.com needs a second source · PolitiFact reliable

Jan 2019 – Feb 2019 Texas "95,000 noncitizens" on voter rolls

In a late-January 2019 advisory, Texas Secretary of State David Whitley said nearly 95,000 noncitizens were registered to vote and about 58,000 of them had voted in one or more Texas elections. The office flagged them because they had once identified as noncitizens to the Department of Public Safety. The state's own advisory called these records "WEAK matches." Even so, on Jan. 27 President Trump tweeted that "58,000 non-citizens voted in Texas" and that voter fraud was "rampant," and fact-checkers reported that none of the people listed had been confirmed as noncitizen voters. Within days, state officials acknowledged that many people may not belong on the list. On Feb. 27, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery ordered Texas to stop removing voters, writing that "there is no widespread voter fraud." His ruling came after a state elections official testified that more than 25,000 people on the list were in fact citizens.

  • x.com social post
    58,000 non-citizens voted in Texas, with 95,000 non-citizens registered to vote. These numbers are just the tip of the iceberg.
  • x.com social post
    VOTER FRAUD ALERT
  • NPR article
    The evidence has shown in a hearing before this Court that there is no widespread voter fraud,
  • youtube.com video

Sources: NPR reliable · NPR reliable · PolitiFact reliable · factcheck.org reliable

Jun 2018 Court strikes down Kansas proof-of-citizenship law (Fish v. Kobach)

On June 18, 2018, Chief U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson struck down Kansas's requirement to show documents proving citizenship when registering to vote. Her 118-page ruling found it violated the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and the 14th Amendment. She found that Secretary of State Kris Kobach had not shown that a "substantial number" of noncitizens had registered (NPR; Slate). Kobach had told the court he could document 127 noncitizens who tried to register in a state of about 1.8 million registered voters. He said 43 succeeded and 11 voted, and called those figures "the tip of the iceberg." The judge wrote that "there is no iceberg; only an icicle" (NPR). AP described Kobach, who had led Trump's now-defunct voter fraud commission, as "a leading source" for Trump's unsupported claim that millions of immigrants in the country illegally may have voted in 2016 (CBS/AP). Kobach said his office would appeal.

  • NPR article
    there is no iceberg; only an icicle, largely created by confusion and administrative error.
  • cbsnews.com article
    was a leading source for Trump's unsubstantiated claim that millions of immigrants in the country illegally may have voted in the 2016 election.
  • aclukansas.org statement
    Late this afternoon, Judge Robinson ruled decisively in favor of the ACLU and its plaintiffs in the case.

Sources: NPR reliable · cbsnews.com reliable · The Hill reliable · slate.com needs a second source

Correction, 2026-10-23: Corrected source credits: the "substantial number" finding is now credited to NPR and Slate, and the "iceberg" and "icicle" lines to NPR alone. Changed "former vice chair" to "had led" to match the AP wording, and "people" to "immigrants" to match the AP text being paraphrased.

Jan 2018 The commission is dissolved

Trump created the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in May 2017 (Executive Order 13799). Newsweek says this followed months of him claiming, without producing evidence, that fraud in the 2016 election cost him the popular vote. Fox News reports he had claimed, without evidence, that 3 to 5 million people voted illegally in 2016, and notes that Clinton got 2.8 million more votes nationwide. On January 3, 2018, he signed an order ending the commission. The White House statement said "substantial evidence of voter fraud" existed but blamed states' refusals to share data and "endless legal battles," and handed the issues to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Fox News reported that there is no evidence voter fraud is widespread in the U.S. or has affected election results.

  • Newsweek (pre–2013) article
    Despite substantial evidence of voter fraud, many states have refused to provide the [commission] with basic information relevant to its inquiry
  • Fox News article
    Kobach characterized the decision to dissolve the bipartisan group as a "tactical change"

Sources: Newsweek (pre–2013) needs a second source · Fox News needs a second source · presidency.ucsb.edu reliable

Jun 2017 – Jul 2017 Election commission asks states for voter data

President Trump created the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity on May 11, 2017. The Washington Post reported that he did so "after repeatedly suggesting that millions of illegal voters cost him the popular vote," and CNN called those claims "debunked and unsubstantiated." On June 28, the commission's vice chair, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, asked every state for voter-roll data by July 14. Requested fields included names, birth dates, party registration, the last four digits of Social Security numbers and voting history. On July 10 the Post reported that at least 44 states had said they would not provide all of the data. That day the commission asked states to send nothing until a federal judge ruled on a privacy lawsuit brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).

  • CNN article
    Kobach also requested that each state provide “publicly available voter roll data” as allowed under each state’s laws
  • CNN article
    "Numerous states are refusing to give information to the very distinguished VOTER FRAUD PANEL. What are they trying to hide," Trump wrote.
  • The Washington Post article
    At least 44 states have indicated that they won’t provide all of their voter data

Sources: CNN reliable · The Washington Post reliable · NPR reliable · The Hill reliable

Jan 2017 – Feb 2017 "3 to 5 million illegal votes" and the New Hampshire "busing" claim

On Jan. 23, 2017, President Trump told congressional leaders that 3 million to 5 million illegal votes had caused him to lose the popular vote, which Hillary Clinton won by nearly 2.9 million. FactCheck.org noted that the National Association of Secretaries of State said its members were "not aware of any evidence" supporting it; that Trump's own lawyers had written in December 2016 that "all available evidence suggests" the election was "not tainted by fraud or mistake"; and that even at the highest rate from a disputed study, noncitizen voting would have added fewer than 800,000 votes to Clinton's total. On Feb. 12, Stephen Miller repeated on ABC's "This Week" the claim that people were bused into New Hampshire to vote, after Trump had told senators that this cost him the state. The AP reported that Gov. Chris Sununu had called similar talk "more a figure of speech," and that detected voter fraud cases in New Hampshire had been "in the single digits over recent elections."

  • x.com social post
    I will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and….
  • cbsnews.com article
    I can tell you that this issue of busing voters in to New Hampshire is widely known by anyone who's worked in New Hampshire politics. It's very real, it's very serious.
  • abc7chicago.com article
    For the record you've provided zero evidence that the President was the victim of massive voter fraud in New Hampshire.
  • youtube.com video

Sources: factcheck.org reliable · cbsnews.com reliable · PolitiFact reliable · abc7chicago.com needs a second source

Nov 2016 – Dec 2016 Millions of people who voted illegally

On Nov. 27, 2016, President-elect Trump tweeted: "In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally." At the time, Hillary Clinton led the popular vote by more than 2 million (NPR); PolitiFact put her lead at about 2.24 million as of Nov. 28, citing the Cook Political Report. NPR reported that Trump offered no evidence and that the claim "appears to have originated" with Infowars, which had reported that 3 million people voted illegally, "citing flawed evidence." PolitiFact said it "found zero evidence" for the claim and rated it Pants on Fire, noting that a News21 investigation "found just 56 cases of noncitizens voting between 2000 and 2011."

  • PolitiFact article
    We rate Trump’s statement Pants on Fire.
  • NPR article
    He did not provide evidence to back up that claim, and Trump's representatives did not immediately respond to a request for more information.
  • CNN article
    This is the first time he has alleged voter fraud in his own victory and there is no evidence of any widespread voter fraud.
  • NBC News video Watch

Sources: PolitiFact reliable · NPR reliable · CNN reliable · factcheck.org reliable

Oct 2016 "Rigged election" claims before Election Day

On Oct. 17, 2016, Trump tweeted that "large scale voter fraud" was "happening on and before election day," and PolitiFact rated the claim Pants on Fire. PolitiFact cited a count by Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt of 31 credible voter-impersonation incidents out of more than 1 billion votes cast from 2000 to 2014. FactCheck.org reported that in a Wisconsin speech the same day, Trump said dead people and noncitizens were voting. He cited a Pew report listing 1.8 million deceased people still on voter rolls, but FactCheck.org found the report did not say they had voted. He also cited an Old Dominion study; the Harvard professor who manages its data said the data was misused and the conclusions were wrong. TIME reported that Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani said on Oct. 16 that Democrats could steal a very close election by having supposedly dead people vote in inner cities.

  • PolitiFact article
    Of course there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day. Why do Republican leaders deny what is going on? So naive!
  • factcheck.org article
    People that have died 10 years ago are still voting,
  • NBC News article
    I will look at it at the time. I'm not looking at anything now,
  • youtube.com video

Sources: PolitiFact reliable · factcheck.org reliable · NBC News reliable · Time reliable