The GOP is making false claims about noncitizens voting. It’s affecting real voters

• By Jude Joffe-Block/NPR

Earlier this month, Alabama voter William Pritchett received an unexpected letter from election officials telling him his voter registration was made inactive and was “on the path for removal from the statewide voter list.”

He was among more than 3,200 people on the state’s voter rolls whose registrations had been flagged by Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen as part of a new initiative to identify possible noncitizens.

Yet Pritchett was born in Alabama and has always been an American citizen.

He told NPR he believes state election officials are “chasing a false narrative” that “noncitizens have been voting and that’s swinging elections.”

“It’s in the news every day where they want to make it into an issue,” Pritchett said. He was able to update his information with local election officials and remains registered to vote. It’s still not clear why his name was added to the state’s list.

The baseless claim that Democrats will attempt to steal the upcoming election by encouraging recently arrived migrants to vote illegally has become a key talking point for former President Donald Trump and his allies this campaign season.

That narrative sowing doubt about the validity of the U.S. electoral system is likely to be invoked by Trump and his supporters as a basis for denying election results should he lose.

Despite the fact that it has long been illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections and there is no credible evidence showing it happens in significant numbers, the false claim has continued to gain momentum.

But as the election nears, the false rhetoric is now having a real impact on citizens as some GOP officials are scrutinizing voter rolls and questioning some voters’ registrations in the final run-up to Election Day — which some voting advocates say violates federal law.

Baseless rumors spark an investigation

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched a criminal probe into organizations that register voters after Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo spread a baseless rumor about undocumented immigrants getting registered to vote outside of Texas driver’s license offices.

“The Biden-Harris Administration has intentionally flooded our country with illegal aliens, and without proper safeguards, foreign nationals can illegally influence elections at the local, state, and national level,” Paxton said in a statement.

Several Republican-led states have recently publicized new processes to identify and remove noncitizens from the voter rolls, though those efforts have often ensnared naturalized citizens.

“There has certainly been an uptick this election cycle in states targeting naturalized citizens,” said Kate Huddleston, an attorney with Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit that has sent notices to Alabama, Tennessee and Texas that their state initiatives potentially violate the National Voter Registration Act.