Trump Says Report Proves Noncitizens Voted In 2020 [Op-Ed]

First Lady Melania Trump Announces Expansion Of Her Foster Care Initiative — Source: Finn Gomez / Getty

At this point, it’s not always clear whether President Donald Trump and his infinite band of MAGA propagandists are still lying about the 2020 election and election security in general because they’re afraid of the aftermath of the upcoming midterm elections, or because Trump is still so desperate to convince the world that the election he lost to President Joe Biden was rigged against him. It’s probably both. Yeah — it’s both.

Either way, his latest attempt at sowing doubt in the U.S. electoral process involves an unauthored, highly unusual Census Bureau report that Trump claims “proves” that he and his miseducated MAGAts have been right all along, and people who are not U.S. citizens are voting in U.S. elections in massive numbers.

And by “massive,” I mean 0.02% of votes cast in 2020 — and even that figure is most likely nonsense, according to experts.

According to the bureau’s seven-page report, which lists no author and says its information is based on a 2020 commercial voter file and various federal administrative records, more than 24,000 noncitizens voted illegally in 2020. Trump claimed on Truth Social that the bureau “is going to analyze the next 32,000,000 Voters, and this number will explode,” proving “I WON THE ELECTION” and the reason why “we must pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT.” (See, I told you it’s both.)

But Trump is, as usual, counting his conspiratorial chickens before they hatch, claiming vindication based on MAGA-manufactured non-evidence that is doomed to be debunked by people who know things. In this case, “data and election experts say the report is questionable in its methodology and conclusions,” as NPR reported.

In fact, according to a Census Bureau employee who spoke with NPR anonymously, career civil servants at the Census Bureau did not conduct the analysis. Instead, people affiliated with the America First Policy Institute, a think tank started by officials from Trump’s first administration, conducted it. This appears to be true, as AFPI highlighted the analysis via social media on Tuesday, claiming that it “maintains that maximizing transparency is a critical step to restoring confidence in our elections.”

But does it, though?

“This analysis is laughable. Census data cannot reliably be matched to voter data,” David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, told NPR. “That said, it’s good to see the president admit these numbers are so small that they couldn’t have changed the outcome in 2020.”

According to AFPI’s own analysis, the 24,000 illegal votes researchers allegedly found is out of 128 million votes that were cast. So, even if the numbers were legitimate, it would only amount to that 0.02% figure I mentioned earlier.

So, how did AFPI come up with these numbers anyway? Well, according to NPR, “The figures use disputed or unknown methodology in an attempt to quantify noncitizen voting in federal races, a problem many studies and audits show is incredibly rare.” And, according to the experts, that’s a bullshit way to apply any kind of math besides Trump math.

“I’d expect that the Census data matching [exercise] is plagued by the lack of unique identifiers in voter records and outdated or incomplete naturalization records,” Michael Morse, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s law school, told NPR. “But the brief’s lack of transparency makes it difficult to pin down each problem or trust any explanation. Regardless, the estimated rate of apparent non-citizen voting is both a tiny fraction of total votes … and entirely consistent with both types of error.”

That’s right — apparently, no one wanted to attach their name to this dubious analysis, which even has former Census Bureau officials raising their eyebrows along with more than a few red flags.

“My biggest concern would be there’s no author attached to the report, which is not common practice within the Census Bureau,” said Misty Heggeness, a professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Kansas, and a former bureau economist whose work is cited in the report. “Usually there are layers and layers of rigor and testing because the Census Bureau is a neutral statistical agency. They want to make sure that they’re getting it right and understanding the data. The fact that there’s no author on this report leads me to wonder whether or not that did happen.”

“It’s a confusing time for the public. I think it is really hard for the public to trust what’s coming out of the administration, the data that they’re seeing,” she went on to say. “This document really does have a lack of source citations and explanation about methods. And if the public sees a document like this that lacks all of those really integral pieces that are generally put out with official statistics, that’s a really good sign to question the validity of the document.”

Amy O’Hara, a former chief of the bureau’s Center for Administrative Records Research and Applications, questioned the conclusions drawn by the report’s investigators, even if the numbers themselves were accurate.

“This brief lacks any sort of measures of variance or discussion of bias,” she said. “While those matches were found, were they the same people between the voter file and the compilation of data from Homeland Security, or do you have people with the same names potentially living in the same state and representing a mismatch?”

O’Hara was also doubtful of the report’s claim that the bureau is “uniquely capable of compiling and publishing statistics on election crime and other forms of fraud.”

“I found that very surprising because even if they observed anomalies in the data, those anomalies aren’t necessarily fraud,” O’Hara said.

Also, it probably didn’t help that the Trump administration got rid of statisticians who actually knew what they were doing; otherwise we’d be dealing with real research that involved real numbers and real facts — and Trump simply can’t have that.

From NPR:

The administration has also been signaling it’s preparing to propose major changes to the 2030 census that are likely to put the bureau in the center of another major political and legal fight.

O’Hara sees the report as another threat to the bureau’s reputation as a nonpartisan statistical agency.

“We are drawing in on the 2030 census that really requires the participation of everybody in the country. Anything that casts a negative light on the Census Bureau’s motives or operations or transparency or lack of adherence to policy could be detrimental,” O’Hara says.

It’s worth noting that the title of the analysis is “Noncitizen Voting in the 2020 Election, A Beginning Analysis,” which suggests more Trump math-based reports are to come, just as the president said in his post.

So, once again, Trump and the so-called “America First” crowd are afraid to let the people speak for themselves at the voting booth, which is why this constant fearmongering, manipulation, and unfettered propaganda is necessary.

Sad.