Are illegals voting

1. What the data actually shows: tiny numbers, lots of noise

Federal and state reviews that ran voter rolls through the Department of Homeland Security’s SAVE verification tool have flagged a small number of possible noncitizen records — for example the agency referred roughly 10,000 cases out of about 49.5 million registrations checked (about 0.02 percent) and some states running SAVE found a few thousand potential matches among millions of records ^{[2] [4]}. Independent researchers and watchdogs conclude proven cases of noncitizen voting are rare: the conservative Heritage Foundation’s long-running database identified only a few dozen proven noncitizen voting cases over decades, and policy analysts have argued that even organizations critical of election integrity measures find scant evidence of a material problem ^{[3] [5]}.

2. Verified prosecutions and individual crimes exist, but are exceptional

There are documented prosecutions and guilty pleas involving noncitizens who illegally voted — for instance one individual pleaded guilty to voting illegally in multiple elections after using a stolen identity ^[1], and media reporting catalogs a handful of high-profile prosecutions and convictions tied to noncitizen voting ^[6]. These criminal cases demonstrate that illegal voting does happen, but the frequency and scale shown in prosecutions are orders of magnitude smaller than the claims that millions of unauthorized immigrants voted ^{[1] [6]}.

3. Political claims versus empirical reviews: a mismatch

Political leaders and campaigns have repeatedly asserted that large numbers of “illegals” voted, and those claims drove states to upload voter files into federal immigration-matching systems; yet multiple reporting and official preliminary reviews have found no evidence of widespread fraud and have pushed back against sweeping assertions of mass noncitizen voting ^{[2] [7]}. Conservative outlets and officials frequently highlight referrals or purges as proof of a problem, while civil-rights groups and some secretaries of state warn that flawed matching processes can create false positives and wrongfully purge eligible citizens ^{[8] [9] [10]}.

4. The verification tools themselves are contested and can harm voters

The SAVE system and other cross-checks were designed for determining immigration benefit eligibility, not for voter-roll maintenance; experts warn that Social Security and immigration databases are imperfect and can misclassify naturalized citizens or long-time residents, leading to erroneous cancellation notices and purges of eligible voters ^{[9] [10]}. Civil-rights advocates and several Democratic secretaries of state have raised privacy and accuracy concerns about expanded use of SAVE for elections, citing examples where tens of thousands of voters received challenges or removal notices based on unreliable data ^{[10] [2]}.

5. Why the debate persists: incentives and information gaps

Misinformation, political incentives, and the difficulty of proving a negative fuel the persistence of claims about large-scale illegal voting; fact-checkers and academic experts say the claim that “many” unauthorized immigrants vote lacks empirical support, even while isolated cases are amplified by partisan actors and sympathetic media ^{[11] [12]}. At the same time, states and federal agencies continue to clash over data access and methodology, leaving gaps that can be exploited rhetorically even as audits and prosecutions slowly identify a small number of actual offenses ^{[8] [2]}.

6. Bottom line — answer to the question “Are illegals voting?”

Yes — there are documented, isolated instances where noncitizens have illegally registered or voted, and some prosecutions have followed — but no reputable, recent review has found evidence of widespread noncitizen voting that would change election outcomes; the available data and expert analysis indicate the problem is extremely limited in scale and often inflated by political messaging ^{[1] [2] [3]}.