{"id":2654492,"date":"2026-09-04T08:33:58","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T12:33:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignmedia-lies-about-infinitesimally-rare-noncitizen-voting-are-a-load-of-bull-hockey\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T08:38:44","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T12:38:44","slug":"utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignmedia-lies-about-infinitesimally-rare-noncitizen-voting-are-a-load-of-bull-hockey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignmedia-lies-about-infinitesimally-rare-noncitizen-voting-are-a-load-of-bull-hockey\/","title":{"rendered":"Media Lies About &#8216;Rare&#8217; Noncitizen Voting Are Bull Hockey"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Futm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignmedia-lies-about-infinitesimally-rare-noncitizen-voting-are-a-load-of-bull-hockey%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2654492&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The article discusses the widespread belief that election fraud, specifically noncitizen voting, is extremely rare, citing sources like U.S. News, PBS, Time, and NPR.However, it questions whether rarity truly indicates insignificance, emphasizing that each illegal vote disenfranchises an eligible voter. It highlights that current statistics measure prosecutions rather than actual incidents, which creates a circular argument because many cases go uninvestigated or unprosecuted, thus never appearing in official records. <\/p>\n<p>The case of Fairfax County, Virginia, exemplifies this issue: despite hundreds of referrals of suspected noncitizens, no prosecutions resulted, and the policy was abandoned due too resource burdens. Similar situations are reported across several states, with authorities identifying potential noncitizens on voter rolls but frequently enough not pursuing investigations or prosecutions. The article argues for honest acknowledgment that the system lacks systematic citizenship verification, and therefore, claiming that noncitizen voting is &#8220;extremely rare&#8221; is misleading. Instead, transparency would require admitting the system&#8217;s lack of thorough checks and the uncertainty surrounding the true incidence of ineligible voting.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The legacy press has an entire vocabulary for election fraud, and every word in it carries the same instruction: Stop looking. \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.usnews.com\/news\/politics\/articles\/2026-08-29\/noncitizen-voting-claims-animate-trumps-attacks-on-midterms-and-set-up-potential-result-challenges\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">U.S. News and World Report<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/politics\/noncitizen-voting-is-extremely-rare-yet-republicans-are-making-it-a-major-election-concern\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">PBS<\/a>: \u201cextremely rare.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/article\/2026\/03\/20\/mail-voting-absentee-voter-fraud-trump-claims-research\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Time magazine<\/a>: \u201cvery, very rare.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2024\/10\/11\/nx-s1-5147732\/voter-fraud-explainer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">NPR<\/a> quoted an expert who called it \u201cinfinitesimally rare.\u201d It has become a reflex, appended to any mention of election integrity, the way a surgeon general\u2019s warning is appended to a pack of cigarettes, that election fraud is rare, rare, rare. The implication is that \u201crare\u201d means \u201cirrelevant.\u201d But does it?<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Since When Is Rarity the Standard?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Every ballot cast by an ineligible voter cancels out the ballot of an eligible one. A noncitizen who votes does not merely add a vote to one side of the ledger \u2014 he subtracts one from a citizen who did everything right. Every fraudulent vote cast invalidates the vote of an eligible voter, effectively disenfranchising that person.<\/p>\n<p>So how many disenfranchised citizens is the acceptable number? One hundred? A thousand? We do not apply this reasoning anywhere else in election law. Nobody argues that ballot-box stuffing is tolerable at low volume, or that a poll worker who alters a few dozen returns should be waved off because the total is statistically small. We do not tell a mugging victim that street crime is rare.<\/p>\n<p>More to the point: Rarity is irrelevant to the margin. Recent congressional races have been decided by a few hundred votes. Virginia\u2019s House of Delegates control <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2018\/jan\/04\/virginia-election-tie-drawing-lots-republican\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">came down<\/a> to a tied district settled by drawing a name from a bowl. In races like these, \u201cinfinitesimally rare\u201d fraud is more than sufficient to determine who governs.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Is the Problem Even Being Measured?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The Heritage Foundation maintains an <a href=\"https:\/\/electionfraud.heritage.org\/search\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Election Fraud Database<\/a> documenting proven instances of election fraud \u2014 cases in which a prosecutor thought the conduct serious enough to act on, and which ended in a conviction, a civil penalty, a judicial finding, or an overturned election. As of this writing, the database contains 1,619 such cases.<\/p>\n<p>The database does not include potential fraud that election officials discover but that is never investigated or prosecuted \u2014 and it obviously cannot include fraud that goes undetected in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>This is the circularity at the heart of the \u201cfraud is rare\u201d consensus. The statistic measures <em>prosecutions<\/em>. It is then offered as proof about <em>incidence<\/em>. But you cannot establish the rate of a crime by counting convictions when the relevant authorities decline to prosecute \u2014 and you certainly cannot do it when the system is designed so that the crime is rarely discovered at all.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Fairfax County Is the Proof<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Consider Fairfax County, Virginia\u2019s largest jurisdiction, in the shadow of the nation\u2019s capital.<\/p>\n<p>In September 2024, Fairfax County\u2019s electoral board adopted a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fairfaxcounty.gov\/elections\/sites\/elections\/files\/Assets\/Documents\/PDF\/Minutes%20-%20021926.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">policy<\/a> requiring the general registrar to refer individuals identified by the Virginia Department of Elections as potential noncitizens to the commonwealth\u2019s attorney and the attorney general. The referrals went out month after month. In a single batch on Oct. 6, 2025, the registrar <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fairfaxcounty.gov\/elections\/sites\/elections\/files\/Assets\/Documents\/PDF\/Minutes%20-%20102325.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">referred<\/a> 71 individuals. An earlier batch that summer <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fairfaxcounty.gov\/elections\/sites\/elections\/files\/Assets\/Documents\/PDF\/Minutes%20-%20060425(v3).pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">sent<\/a> 78 names forward. Over roughly a year and a half of monthly referrals, the cumulative total ran well into the hundreds.<\/p>\n<p>Yet on Feb. 19, 2026, the board voted to rescind the policy. The stated reason, according to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fairfaxcounty.gov\/elections\/sites\/elections\/files\/Assets\/Documents\/PDF\/Minutes%20-%20021926.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">meeting minutes<\/a>, was that the policy had not led to a single prosecution, that compliance consumed \u201csignificant\u201d staff time at the elections office, the commonwealth\u2019s attorney, and the attorney general\u2019s office, and that no prosecutor would find that checking a box on a DMV form met the beyond<a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/smith-withheld-gop-names-to-judges-who-greenlit-phone-records-access\/\" title=\"Smith withheld GOP names to judges who greenlit phone records access\">-a-reasonable-doubt standard<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Read that again. Hundreds of referrals. Zero prosecutions. Policy abandoned as too burdensome.<\/p>\n<p>And here is the part that matters for the statistic: Because none of those cases were prosecuted, not one of them will ever appear in the Heritage database \u2014 or in any of the academic tallies that journalists cite when they write that noncitizen voting is infinitesimally rare. The cases were found. They were referred. They were dropped. And their disappearance from the record is then cited as evidence that there was nothing there.<\/p>\n<p>The context is worse than the referral numbers suggest. Fairfax County <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fairfaxtimes.com\/articles\/fairfax_county\/cleaning-up-voter-rolls-brings-controversy\/article_679199fc-9247-11ef-a3a8-df77ae8b57a6.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">canceled<\/a> 985 registrations on citizenship grounds between January 2022 and July 2024 alone; county Republicans count 1,912 <a href=\"https:\/\/fairfaxgop.org\/thousands-of-noncitizens-on-voter-rolls-in-one-county-underscore-need-for-save-act\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">cancellations<\/a> over four years, including 538 in 2025 \u2014 more than one per day. Virginia removed <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2024\/08\/08\/if-democrats-want-proof-foreigners-are-registering-to-vote-virginia-just-found-6303-examples\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">6,303<\/a> statewide between January 2022 and July 2024.<\/p>\n<p>Crucially, Virginia does not verify citizenship at registration. It cannot; federal law forbids requiring documentary proof on the federal form. So these registrations surfaced only when the registrants disclosed their own status \u2014 typically on a jury questionnaire or a DMV transaction. Nobody went looking. The system caught only the people who raised their hands.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Fairfax Is Not an Outlier<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Similar findings have emerged across the country:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ohio:<\/strong> Secretary of State Frank LaRose <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsday.com\/news\/nation\/ohio-voters-citizenship-referrals-w08950\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">announced<\/a> in August 2024 that his office had identified 597 individuals who registered to vote despite not being citizens. Of those, 138 appeared to have actually cast ballots. He referred them to the attorney general.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Texas:<\/strong> Gov. Greg Abbott <a href=\"https:\/\/gov.texas.gov\/news\/post\/governor-abbott-announces-over-1-million-ineligible-voters-removed-from-voter-rolls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">announced<\/a> that more than 6,500 noncitizens had been removed from the state\u2019s rolls in the three years preceding the 2024 election. After that election, the secretary of state<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sos.state.tx.us\/about\/newsreleases\/2025\/060525.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"> referred<\/a> 33 potential noncitizen voters for criminal investigation.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Alabama:<\/strong> Secretary of State Wes Allen <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sos.alabama.gov\/newsroom\/secretary-state-wes-allen-implements-process-remove-noncitizens-registered-vote-alabama\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">identified<\/a> 3,251 registered voters who had at some point been <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\" >issued noncitizen identification numbers<\/a>, and he directed county boards to move them to inactive status pending citizenship verification.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tennessee:<\/strong> Election officials <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tba.org\/?pg=LawBlog&#038;blAction=showEntry&#038;blogEntry=109350\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">sent letters<\/a> to more than 14,000 registered voters identified through Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security records, asking them to verify their U.S. citizenship.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Louisiana:<\/strong> Gov. Jeff Landry <a href=\"https:\/\/www.governing.com\/policy\/louisiana-governor-targets-alleged-voter-fraud-from-noncitizens\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">ordered<\/a> the Office of Motor Vehicles to \u201ccompile a list of people who have been issued a temporary license or ID card\u201d for cross-checking against the voter file. Louisiana\u2019s OMV had issued more than 40,000 temporary IDs to noncitizens and non-permanent residents.<\/p>\n<p><strong>North Carolina:<\/strong> In June of this year, DHS announced that they had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wunc.org\/2026-07-20\/state-responds-to-hundreds-of-potential-non-u-s-citizens-on-north-carolinas-voter-rolls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">identified<\/a> 1,599 potential non-U.S. citizens on North Carolina voter rolls. Federal prosecutors <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/usao-ednc\/pr\/alien-sent-prison-illegally-voting-north-carolina-elections\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">indicted<\/a> and subsequently sentenced to federal prison a Canadian citizen for falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen and voting in both the 2022 and 2024 elections.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Virginia:<\/strong> During the 14-month period from May 2023 to June 2024, 1,973 unique voter records were <a href=\"https:\/\/digitalpollwatchers.org\/non-citizen-registrations-with-previous-voting-history-in-va-election-data-update-july-2024\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">marked for removal<\/a> by the Virginia Department of Elections (ELECT) with the reason \u201cDetermined Non-Citizen.\u201d Of those 1,973 records, 399 unique voter ID\u2019s <em>also <\/em>had a record of casting one or more ballots in the accumulated vote history data, according to the Electoral Process Education Corp (EPEC).<\/p>\n<p>Officials in these states will readily tell you that the numbers are preliminary, that some flagged individuals turn out to be naturalized citizens, and that registration is not the same as voting. All true, and worth saying. But note what those caveats concede: Nobody actually knows. Which is precisely the point.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>What Honest Language Would Look Like<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The defensible sentence is not \u201cNoncitizen voting is extremely rare.\u201d The defensible sentence is: <em>We do not systematically verify citizenship at registration, we detect ineligible registrations mostly by accident, and when we do detect them, we usually decline to prosecute.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>That is a different claim entirely. The first implies a settled empirical finding. The second describes a system that has arranged, more or less deliberately, not to know the answer \u2014 and then treats its own ignorance as reassurance.<\/p>\n<p>Reasonable people can disagree about whether President Donald Trump\u2019s executive order on election security is the right remedy, or whether it is even lawful. That fight is now back before Judge Indira Talwani in Boston, and it will not be settled before November. But the debate ought to proceed from an accurate description of what we know and, more importantly, of what we have chosen not to find out.<\/p>\n<p>Fairfax County spent seventeen months finding cases and referring them to prosecutors who did nothing with them. Then it stopped looking. Whatever else that is, it is not evidence that there was nothing to find.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Katharine C. Gorka is the director of The Heritage Foundation\u2019s Center for Civil Society and the American Dialogue.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Media downplays election fraud, claiming it&#8217;s &#8220;extremely rare.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4401,"featured_media":2654493,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Copy-of-Untitled-2026-09-03T130847.437.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33651],"tags":[32360,4188,50738,36987],"class_list":["post-2654492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-western-journal","tag-election-fraud","tag-media","tag-misinformation-2","tag-noncitizen-voting"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Copy-of-Untitled-2026-09-03T130847.437.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2654492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4401"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2654492"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2654492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2654496,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2654492\/revisions\/2654496"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2654493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2654492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2654492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2654492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}