The Department of Homeland Security recently stirred controversy with assertions that Nevada’s voter registration system included thousands of noncitizen voters. Although this notion was echoed by Donald Trump last month, emerging details suggest it may be unfounded.
In a high-profile address from the White House on July 16, Trump alleged that nationwide, voter rolls were tainted with hundreds of thousands of noncitizens.
Following his statement, the White House unveiled documentation referencing the Department of Homeland Security’s discovery of approximately 278,000 noncitizens supposedly ‘registered to vote in federal elections’ across the United States.
These documents, shared on the official White House website, estimated that around 16,000 noncitizens might have been registered within Nevada’s electoral framework.
Nevertheless, Nevada state officials have countered these allegations, and recent revelations from the New York Times show that DHS has pinpointed only 185 ‘potential’ noncitizen voters in Nevada’s records, casting doubt on the much larger claims previously circulated.
The disclosure from the department came during a private meeting between DHS officials and Nevada officials last week.
The discrepancy could open the president to claims that he presented incorrect data, which could anger Trump.
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 the Daily Mail.
‘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.