2024 U.S. ELECTIONS RAPID RESEARCH BLOG
This is part of an ongoing series of rapid research blog posts and rapid research analysis about the 2024 U.S. elections from the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. It was crossposted on the CIP’s election rumor research Substack newsletter.
Key Takeaways
- On October 16, Florida announced it is suing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), claiming that DHS must provide federal citizenship data to Florida so it can clean its voter rolls.
- The suit came two days after a letter from 16 state attorneys general, including Florida’s, making this demand for data to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
- The letter to DHS from the state attorneys general references a document from the Heritage Foundation to evidence its claims of mass non-citizen voting, even though the foundation’s own research shows fewer than 100 cases of non-citizen voting nationwide between 2002 and 2023.
- DHS’s refusal to provide the requested data has been a vector for online rumoring, alleging that the federal government is preventing states from securing their elections or that Democrats specifically are enabling non-citizen voting.
Background
On October 14, 16 states cosigned a letter to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) requesting access to the federal Person Centric Query Service (PCQS) database to verify the citizenship of registered voters. The letter states that DHS has not yet provided this data to states despite it having previously been requested. Two days later, Florida filed a suit against DHS, claiming they need data about non-citizens from DHS to maintain accurate voter rolls. The complaint states that Florida is filing this suit since DHS is not cooperating with them.
The complaint references “ample evidence of non-citizen voting” and cites a brief document from the Heritage Foundation as the core reason and justification for the filed complaint.
However, the Heritage Foundation’s own research reveals that, between 2002 and 2023, they identified fewer than 100 cases of non-citizen voting nationwide. This figure and findings from other investigations demonstrate that non-citizen voting is statistically insignificant and nearly nonexistent.
However, the Heritage Foundation’s own research reveals that, between 2002 and 2023, they identified only 85 cases of non-citizen voting nationwide. This figure and findings from other investigations demonstrate that non-citizen voting is statistically insignificant and nearly nonexistent.
Florida’s lawsuit is part of a broader set of litigation between various states and the federal government over issues related to non-citizen voting, a dominant theme this election cycle. As such, rumors about these events have emerged online, with users framing this lawsuit as evidence that alleges 1) non-citizen voting is occurring, 2) the federal government is blocking states from securing their elections, or 3) the Democratic Party is aware of and enabling non-citizen voting.
Context
This summer, America First Legal launched a nationwide effort to encourage state election officials to pursue the DHS to assist in purging voter rolls of non-citizens. On June 24, 2024, AFL sent letters to officials in all 50 states, offering a detailed action plan to enforce federal laws aimed at preventing non-citizen voting. The letters specifically call out DHS’s Person Centric Query Service (PCQS) tool, saying that “right now” states could request data from DHS. The letter explicitly states, “If DHS fails to respond to an inquiry, you can sue in federal court to obtain the necessary information that Congress has required DHS to provide.” The effort was publicized in the New York Post.
America First Legal is a conservative legal organization started by former Trump advisor Stephen Miller in early 2021. The group has filed hundreds of lawsuits, including suing social media companies that allege censorship of conservative beliefs, fighting transgender policies in school districts, and pushing back against corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
The October 14 letter from the attorneys general to DHS appears to follow some of the legal options outlined in the June 24 letter from America First Legal. Additionally, when the October 14 letter was publicized and the subsequent lawsuit came out, America First Legal’s tweet about it (see Figure 1) was one of the most amplified.
Timeline and Spread
This timeline offers some of the key moments in the growth and spread of online conversation and rumors about this lawsuit and related actions. It does not detail every single popular post nor is everything in this timeline a rumor, but we focus on how the reporting of these actions contributed to rumoring online.
October 14–16: A letter and a lawsuit
On October 14, a letter was sent to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by 16 state attorneys general, demanding access to federal citizen data for managing voter registration databases at the state level.
Two days after the letter, on October 16, Florida filed a suit against DHS to obtain access to this data to manage their voter rolls. This lawsuit utilizes a citation from the Heritage Foundation about noncitizen voting to validate it as a threat to Florida’s election security.
October 17–18: Coverage and rumors about the lawsuit and noncitizen voting at large
A majority of online conversations on X around this lawsuit occurred between October 17 and 18. On October 17, one of the first high-traction posts about this lawsuit came from Ryan Fournier, chair of Students for Trump, a political advocacy organization. This post congratulated Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on this effort. Shortly after this post, the aforementioned America First Legal posted about this lawsuit.
Figure 1: A graph showing the cumulative number of tweets related to rumoring about the Florida DHS lawsuit. Circles are sized by the number of followers of the tweeting account, and only accounts with 50,000 or more followers are visualized using the circles, although the y-axis includes counts of all related tweets regardless of follower size.
True the Vote, a self-described conservative vote-monitoring organization, posted three hours later and became a dominant voice in this conversation (Figure 1). True the Vote said, “Florida is the FIRST state to sue DHS over their refusal to release noncitizen data so that Florida can clean its voter rolls.” On October 17, their post included the Florida complaint and encouraged other states to join in. This post speculates that non-citizen voting has impacted Florida in previous elections and that other states are also impacted by it.
Later that day, @DefiantlyFree, an X user with a large following who frequently posts about election integrity issues, posts the multi-state letter speculating that this suit is evidence that the federal government is blocking state governments from protecting their elections, moving into allegations of intentionality. This post also speculates on allegations that the Democratic Party is purposefully allowing non-citizen voting to occur.
On October 18, True the Vote posts that states have “joined forces” to request federal data from DHS. They include the letter from October 14. The post speculates that the current election is not secure without this data, implying that mass non-citizen voting is occurring.
Also on October 18, Bryan Griffin, the head of communications for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, retweets his own September tweet about Florida asking DHS for this data. In the retweet, he claims that the federal government is “making it harder” for states to secure elections by refusing to provide the citizenship data.
Conclusion
This lawsuit is part of a narrative this cycle about non-citizen voting, spread primarily by conservative organizations and outlets. This incident in particular is an example of how the pervasiveness of the narrative can both spawn rumors and legal action, which can serve a larger political strategy to sow distrust in election processes and procedures through disinformation campaigns that motivate legal action and political mobilization. We expect to see more of these legal challenges emerge around election integrity this year and to see rumors emerge from some of the discussion around these types of lawsuits.
Correction: On October 26, 2024, we updated this piece to reflect that the Heritage Foundation database for “ineligible voting” had 85 cases of non-citizen voters between 2002 and 2023, not 23 as The New York Times had reported. This comes from both The Washington Post and our own analysis of the database.