Kerby Anderson

Are non-citizens voting in our elections illegally? One side says this is a non-existent problem. The other side believes it takes place more than we might imagine. Who is right?

A groundbreaking study by professors at Old Dominion University in Virginia attempted to compile scientifically derived illegal voting numbers using the extensive Harvard/YouGov study that asks questions of thousands of voters. They concluded that as many as 2.8 million non-citizens voted in 2008. But the Harvard/YouGov professors who looked at the same data contend that “zero” non-citizens voted in that election.

It is possible that the number of non-citizens who voted might be even higher than the professors at Old Dominion estimated? A team from Just Facts looked at the data and noticed two flawed assumptions made by the Harvard/YouGov researchers.

First, they assumed that people who said they voted and identified a candidate did not vote unless their names showed up in a database. Many people voting fraudulently are not going to be using their true identity, so their names would not show up on the voting databases.

Second, the Harvard researchers assumed that citizens might misidentify themselves as non-citizens, but concluded that non-citizens never would misidentify themselves as citizens. Yet, we know that illegal immigrants often claim they are citizens in order to conceal the fact that they are in this country illegally. Some of the polled non-citizens denied they were registered to vote when publicly available databases show that they were.

When you rework the numbers without these false assumptions, Just Facts came to the conclusion that as many as 5.7 million non-citizens voted in the 2008 election that put Barack Obama in the White House.

Illegal voting may be a bigger problem than we have been led to believe.