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President Trump is using an unusual report from the Census Bureau to renew false claims of widespread illegal voting by noncitizens. NPR has learned the analysis that he's relying on has ties to a think tank aligned with Trump, and both data and election experts say the report's conclusions are questionable. NPR's Hansi Lo Wang has this report.
HANSI LO WANG, BYLINE: Many past studies and audits show illegal voting by non-U.S. citizens is incredibly rare. But in these final months before the midterm election...
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We are releasing the results of a stunning investigation by the Department of Homeland Security.
WANG: President Trump and officials, like Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, have been releasing a lot of numbers about noncitizen voting with little details about how they were produced.
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MARKWAYNE MULLIN: One thing that I love about numbers and I love about facts is they don't lie.
WANG: The latest number is over 24,000. That's how many noncitizens allegedly voted illegally in the 2020 presidential election, according to a highly unusual report from the Census Bureau. That number translates to less than 0.02% of more than 128 million voter records that this report says were compared with government files. But it doesn't say who at the bureau did the comparing.
AMY O'HARA: It doesn't mention which division produced it, who the authors were.
WANG: Amy O'Hara is a data scientist who once led the Census Bureau's research on matching data records to produce statistics.
O'HARA: It is light on details about the data sources that were used. And so I've got a lot of questions about how the matching was done.
WANG: Matching of different kinds of records. That's known to be an especially hard way to produce accurate numbers. In this case, the Census Bureau report used voter records from a firm called Data-Clear. Carolyn Carlson started the firm, and she says the voter file was part of a 2024 contract for improving surveys and the census.
Was there any indication that it would be used to look for noncitizen voting?
CAROLYN CARLSON: It is not in the 2024 documentation.
WANG: NPR has learned the report's analysis was not done by career civil servants. And the team behind it included individuals affiliated with the America First Policy Institute, a think tank started by officials from Trump's first administration. That's according to a Census Bureau employee who NPR agreed not to name because they fear retaliation at work. Spokespeople for the bureau and the think tank did not respond to requests for comment.
ROBERT SANTOS: I'm very concerned, very disturbed.
WANG: Robert Santos was director of the Census Bureau during the Biden administration. Santos has called for the bureau to remove the noncitizen voting report from its website.
SANTOS: The scientific reputation of the bureau has been beyond reproach. And as long as that document sits on the Census Bureau's website, that's no longer the case.
MISTY HEGGENESS: It is a confusing time for the public.
WANG: Misty Heggeness is a former Census Bureau economist. One of her research papers is cited in the report. But Heggeness says she wonders if the report went through the same layers of review and testing that are required for research from civil servants.
HEGGENESS: I think it is really hard for the public to trust what's coming out of the administration, the data that they're seeing. And I think it's more important now than ever to question what is coming out.
WANG: More reports on noncitizen voting may be coming soon from the administration. The Census Bureau's report calls itself a, quote, "beginning analysis." And after the bureau checks more voter records, Trump said on social media that the final number of alleged noncitizen voters in 2020 will, quote, "explode."
Hansi Lo Wang, NPR News.
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