While we have no idea how Phillips arrived at his claim that 3-million noncitizens voted, people who have made similar claims in the past have cited a 2014 report that claims 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010 midterm congressional elections.
That report was based on data from a Harvard survey of people. But the data was flawed, which created flaws in the subsequent report.
The authors of the survey say a small percentage of respondents, who are citizens, accidentally misidentified themselves as noncitizens on the survey. This is because the respondents didn’t read the question carefully and accidentally selected the wrong response to the question.
How do researchers know this? One of the authors of the survey, Brian Schaffner, said people changed their answers later when they were asked about their citizenship.
"When we took out people who changed their answer on the citizenship question and only look at people who answered consistently that they were noncitizens, we found no reported noncitizens who voted," Schaffner told PolitiFact.
Other research contradicts Phillips’ tweet.
News 21, a national investigative reporting project funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, found just 56 cases of noncitizens voting between 2000 and 2011.
A report by the liberal Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law found that most cases of noncitizens voting were accidental. "Although there are a few recorded examples in which noncitizens have apparently registered or voted, investigators have concluded that they were likely not aware that doing so was improper," reads the 2007 report.
States that have tried to purge noncitizens from voter rolls, meanwhile, have found even government data lacking.
In 2012, Florida Governor Rick Scott’s administration started an effort trying to crack down on noncitizens voting by comparing driver's license data against voter rolls.
Through this process the Florida Department of State created a list of 182,000 potential noncitizens that had voted. That number was whittled down to 2,700, then to about 200 before the purge was stopped amid criticism that the data was flawed given the number of false positives — including a Brooklyn-born World War II vet.
Ultimately, only 85 people were removed from the voting rolls. State officials began to pursue a second attempt at a purge in advance of the 2014 election but then abandoned that effort, too.
Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine, called Phillips’ claim "fake news."
"There is no credible evidence I have seen to show large numbers of noncitizens voting in U.S. elections anywhere," Hasen said. "The idea that 3 million noncitizens could have illegally voted in our elections without being detected is obscenely ludicrous."
Our ruling
Reports claim 3 million "illegal aliens" cast votes in this year's election.
The articles point back to tweets from Gregg Phillips, who has worked for the Republican Party and has a voter fraud reporting app. But Phillips will not provide any evidence to support his claim, which happens to be undermined by publicly available information.
If Phillips does release a more detailed report, we will consider that information. But for now, this claim is inaccurate. We rate it False.
http://www.politifact.com/punditfac...illion-undocumented-immigrants-did-not-vote-/
That report was based on data from a Harvard survey of people. But the data was flawed, which created flaws in the subsequent report.
The authors of the survey say a small percentage of respondents, who are citizens, accidentally misidentified themselves as noncitizens on the survey. This is because the respondents didn’t read the question carefully and accidentally selected the wrong response to the question.
How do researchers know this? One of the authors of the survey, Brian Schaffner, said people changed their answers later when they were asked about their citizenship.
"When we took out people who changed their answer on the citizenship question and only look at people who answered consistently that they were noncitizens, we found no reported noncitizens who voted," Schaffner told PolitiFact.
Other research contradicts Phillips’ tweet.
News 21, a national investigative reporting project funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, found just 56 cases of noncitizens voting between 2000 and 2011.
A report by the liberal Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law found that most cases of noncitizens voting were accidental. "Although there are a few recorded examples in which noncitizens have apparently registered or voted, investigators have concluded that they were likely not aware that doing so was improper," reads the 2007 report.
States that have tried to purge noncitizens from voter rolls, meanwhile, have found even government data lacking.
In 2012, Florida Governor Rick Scott’s administration started an effort trying to crack down on noncitizens voting by comparing driver's license data against voter rolls.
Through this process the Florida Department of State created a list of 182,000 potential noncitizens that had voted. That number was whittled down to 2,700, then to about 200 before the purge was stopped amid criticism that the data was flawed given the number of false positives — including a Brooklyn-born World War II vet.
Ultimately, only 85 people were removed from the voting rolls. State officials began to pursue a second attempt at a purge in advance of the 2014 election but then abandoned that effort, too.
Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine, called Phillips’ claim "fake news."
"There is no credible evidence I have seen to show large numbers of noncitizens voting in U.S. elections anywhere," Hasen said. "The idea that 3 million noncitizens could have illegally voted in our elections without being detected is obscenely ludicrous."
Our ruling
Reports claim 3 million "illegal aliens" cast votes in this year's election.
The articles point back to tweets from Gregg Phillips, who has worked for the Republican Party and has a voter fraud reporting app. But Phillips will not provide any evidence to support his claim, which happens to be undermined by publicly available information.
If Phillips does release a more detailed report, we will consider that information. But for now, this claim is inaccurate. We rate it False.
http://www.politifact.com/punditfac...illion-undocumented-immigrants-did-not-vote-/
