The Department of Homeland Security said thousands of noncitizens appeared on Nevada’s voter rolls, a claim Donald Trump echoed last month. But state officials are now challenging that figure, and the evidence released so far suggests the number may be far smaller.
In a prime-time address from the White House on July 16, Trump asserted that hundreds of thousands of noncitizens were listed on voter registration rolls nationwide.
Shortly afterward, the White House published documents stating that DHS had identified about 278,000 noncitizens “registered to vote in federal elections” across the United States.
Those materials, posted on the White House website, also alleged that Nevada’s election system could include roughly 16,000 noncitizen voters.
Nevada officials, however, are disputing that characterization. According to the New York Times, DHS has identified only 185 “potential” noncitizen voters in the state’s voter registration system.
That clarification reportedly came during a private meeting last week between Department of Homeland Security officials and Nevada state officials.
The gap between the White House figure and the number later presented by DHS could fuel accusations that Trump relied on inaccurate voter fraud data, a prospect likely to draw sharp political attention.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
President Donald Trump announced in a July 16 speech that DHS had identified approximately 278,000 noncitizen voters who are registered to vote
However, Nevada officials are pushing back on that claim, and DHS has only identified 185 ‘potential’ noncitizen voters in the state’s system, according to the New York Times
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin has threatened local election officials with jail time if they don’t cooperate with the administration’s efforts to change voting policies
‘The 185 are the individuals that had gone through manual review,’ a DHS spokesperson told Our News Outlet.
‘The list shared with Nevada also included 6,218 other individuals with the highest number of matching attributes. This was at the request of [Nevada]. They wanted to start with a subset less than the 15,903.’
The spokesperson claimed the insinuation that their numbers were incorrect as ‘false.’
During the virtual meeting between DHS and Nevada officials, department staffers said that the 16,000 figure touted by the White House was ‘the ceiling’ of potential noncitizen voters, according to a recording obtained by the Times.
Federal officials relayed in emails to their counterparts in Nevada that 14,000 names still need further review, according to an email reviewed by the Times.
The list of noncitizen voters DHS shared with Nevada is reportedly incomplete and does not include names.
In response, Nevada officials have requested additional information from DHS.
Nevada’s Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat, claims that the numbers provided from DHS are ‘preliminary.’
‘There is not high enough confidence to be able to share the full data set with Nevada officials,’ Aguilar said in a recent statement.
Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat, said in a statement: ‘DHS representatives informed our office that the numbers that were provided to the public are preliminary and that there is not high enough confidence to be able to share the full data set with Nevada officials’
‘The Secretary of State’s office will not risk disenfranchising eligible voters and ripping away their constitutional right to vote without the highest confidence of their ineligibility,’ he continued.
The inconsistent numbers open up questions about the remaining nearly 260,000 noncitizens that DHS has claimed are registered to vote in federal elections.
In addition to Nevada, DHS published a review stating that ‘there may be as many as’ 190,832 noncitizens registered to vote in California, 35,152 in New Jersey and 14,576 in Pennsylvania.
‘To reveal just how vulnerable our elections continue to be, we are releasing the results of a stunning investigation by the Department of Homeland Security,’ Trump said during his July 16 White House address.
‘According to the DHS review, state voter rolls and public records, they identified approximately 278,000 non-citizens who are registered to vote in federal elections.’
The White House has claimed that there could be many more noncitizens who are registered to vote but that Democratic-led states have refused to share their voter files.
While Nevada has a Republican governor, its Democratic secretary of state, who is responsible for voting, has combatted DHS’s claims.
