Those who support the “Great Alternative Theory” serve as icing on the cake.
Just to get into the most important details, the yellow states below are states where non-citizens can vote in federal elections.
As Ballotpedia points out, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 explicitly prohibits non-referendum voting in federal elections, which is the purview of the Johnson Legislature.
But with that in mind, here’s a map of states where non-citizens can vote in state elections.
Here, too, a complete ban is in place. The only places in the United States where non-citizens can vote are in some municipalities in some states, including:
The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 clearly details how this works legally. for such other purposes, but not as an opportunity to vote for any candidate or candidates for such federal office. ”
And yet, of course, Trump and his allies have frequently claimed that non-citizens always vote in elections, with decisive results. This is also not true.
The Washington Post Fact Checker investigated this matter in detail last month. A Brennan Center analysis of his 23.5 million votes cast in 42 jurisdictions during the 2016 election found 30 cases of suspected non-referendum voting, meaning a disproportionate number of votes cast. Suffice it to say, it’s about 0.0001 percent. If the same turnout rate is maintained in 2020, approximately 200 non-citizen voters will be cast nationwide in the presidential election.
Research published a decade ago suggested non-referendums were more common. As expected, Trump repeatedly emphasized that research in his rhetoric. It has since been proven that this result probably relies on people incorrectly identifying themselves as non-nationals. “[T]”The proportion of noncitizen voters in recent U.S. elections is likely zero,” the response report asserts.
President Trump almost certainly doesn’t care about that any more than he cares that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens. What he cares about is creating fear that the election will be overturned (oh no!) by malicious immigrants (oh no!).
We noted Thursday that this idea of a non-referendum vote is quietly growing amid President Trump’s dissatisfaction with the American election, but this shift is clearly focused more on the immigration part than the election part. I’m guessing. Immigration is at the center of Republican attention as the election approaches. This is a way to incorporate it into President Trump’s efforts to sow doubt about the election results.
As mentioned above, this is a big, subtle nod to the (seemingly growing) elements on the right who believe there is an actual conspiracy afoot to bring immigrants into the country in order to get them to vote for Democrats. also works. Prominent speakers like Elon Musk have argued that immigration to the United States is not only dangerous to personal safety (as attempted by another trend of anti-immigrant sentiment), but also to the United States itself. Spreading false claims about a non-referendum vote in order to make it appear that there was.
As commonly formulated, the “Great Alternative Theory” posits that the purpose is to grant citizenship to these newly arrived people and allow them to legally vote. . But it will take too long to be useful in November, so I’ll stop here.
Is this all completely cynical and just a political ploy? It’s hard to see how that could be otherwise.
