How Us States Mistakenly Added 30,000 Non-Citizens to Voter Rolls
David Morgan, Reuters, September 23, 2026
US states may have added more than 30,000 self-declared non-citizens to the nation’s voter rolls since 2000 because of software glitches and clerical errors made while processing their driver’s license and state ID applications, according to official records reviewed by Reuters.
The cases expose weaknesses in voter registration systems across a dozen US states governed by both Democrats and Republicans, but at numbers that experts said were too small relative to the country’s more than 170 million registered voters to impact elections. Reuters was not able to determine how many of these non-citizens actually cast a ballot.
The findings suggest that inadvertent bureaucratic failures, rather than organized efforts to register immigrants illegally, are a major source of non-citizen registrations, and raise questions about whether legislative efforts to require proof of citizenship for voter registration would eliminate the issue.
{snip}
New Jersey announced the most recent high-profile case of errant voter registrations over the summer, saying a technology glitch added about 6,600 non-citizens to voter rolls between June 2023 and June 2024, even though they answered “no” when asked if they were citizens while applying for licenses and IDs.
Bureaucratic errors have also been reported in at least 11 other states – including Republican strongholds like Iowa, Texas and South Dakota – bringing the nationwide figure above 30,000 since 2000, according to the Reuters reporting.
A nationwide tally of such mistakes has not previously been reported.
Reuters used data from the Center for Election Innovation & Research, a non-profit group that tracks claims of non-citizen voter registration and voting, to identify states where self-declared non-citizens were registered. Reuters then verified the numbers with state officials, court records, and local media reports.
The data showed errors occurred in California, Illinois, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Virginia.
The numbers are inexact because state data is often tentative and subject to revision.
Such mistakes are likely a top reason non-citizens make it onto the nation’s voter rolls, according to Don Palmer, a senior legal fellow for election integrity at the conservative Heritage Foundation and former Trump-appointed chair of the US Election Assistance Commission.
{snip}
The White House has pressured Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, a proposal to crack down on illegal voting that would require people to show proof of US citizenship to register to vote, and a photo ID to cast a ballot.
But it is unlikely such a bill would prevent the kinds of mistakes being made by state agencies, said David Becker, executive director of CEIR.
{snip}
A Reuters data analysis published earlier this year showed federal prosecutors have charged only 129 people under a federal “voting by aliens” statute created by Congress in 1996. In none of those cases did prosecutors allege a coordinated effort to influence an election.
{snip}
Underlying the glitches and human errors are state motor-voter systems that register people to vote when they apply for driver’s licenses, state IDs and other government services under the National Voter Registration Act.
The largely Democratic initiative to address low voter participation passed in 1993 with bipartisan support under then-President Bill Clinton. Voter registration has climbed to more than 86% in 2024, from 62% in 1990, according to Census data and the US Election Assistance Commission.
Republicans claim that such state motor-voter systems have become a major problem, however, due to the doubling of the US immigrant population since 1990.
{snip}
In some other states, estimates of registered non-citizens have been initially overstated.
Just before the 2024 election, Iowa, for example, announced that more than 2,000 people had registered to vote or had voted in the state after self-reporting to the Iowa Department of Transportation as non-citizens.
Six months later, the number shrank to 277.
{snip}
