Surveyed voters think non-citizens could affect midterms

A majority of likely voters say illegal voting by non-citizens could affect the outcome of some elections this fall, according to a Rasmussen Reports poll released Oct. 16, while a Michigan county clerk reported finding more non-citizens on his voter rolls.

“We’re upholding election integrity by investigating all claims of non-citizen voters, as rare as they are,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, said, according to the Daily Signal’s report on the findings.

In the Rasmussen poll, 56% of 1,064 likely voters said non-citizen voting could likely affect some elections this fall. Separately, 57% said it is likely non-citizens are illegally registered in their state. Among 2024 Trump voters, 82% said fall elections could be affected, compared with 31% of Kamala Harris voters. The survey was conducted Oct. 12–14 and has a margin of error of three percentage points.

In Michigan, Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini, a Republican running for secretary of state, noted that nine of the 236 people who self-reported that they were non-citizens when summoned for jury duty were registered voters, and one of them had a voting history. Votebeat reported in May that a state review of an earlier Forlini list found one of three flagged voters with a voting history was a citizen. 

Michigan’s review of its full 2025 voter roll found 16 non-citizens who may have voted in 2024, out of 8.1 million registered voters. While the numbers are small, even a few votes could determine an election in tight races. 

In California, federal authorities announced Oct. 19 that they arrested more than two dozen foreign nationals in a sweep the Justice Department called Operation Protect the Vote, ABC7 reported. The department said those arrested are lawful permanent residents accused of fraudulent voter registration and false statements on naturalization applications, the AP News reported. The allegations are unproven at this stage.

“More to come as we announce Operation Protect the Vote this morning,” Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, posted on X before the announcement. 

The department has also sued to stop California from counting mail ballots from about 20,000 people it calls likely non-citizens. 

California attorney general Rob Bonta alleged that the DOJ said in its lawsuit that it compared voter rolls to the federal SAVE database, an act that a D.C.-based U.S. district judge later prohibited on Oct. 9, citing inaccuracies in the data that led to citizens being purged from voter rolls. The DOJ, meanwhile, said California officials did nothing when they received a list of 20,000 likely non-citizens.

In Nebraska, on Oct. 16 the state Supreme Court ruled 6-1 that the RNC and two voters failed to prove a 2005 voter registration law is unconstitutional. The law lets U.S. citizens who have never lived in Nebraska register and vote where a parent is registered. The RNC argued it dilutes lawful votes and violates the state constitution’s residency requirement.

Justice William Cassel dissented on standing, writing, “These numbers establish that the claimed harm is neither actual, imminent, nor palpable. The purported harm resembles a droplet in a deluge.” Seventy-two people registered under the law voted in 2024, out of 965,236 voters.