Can noncitizens vote in Pennsylvania elections?
U.S. law bans noncitizens from voting in federal elections, such as races for president, U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives. Like many states, Pennsylvania also prohibits noncitizens from voting in elections for state offices.
A 1996 federal law allows fines and imprisoned for up to a year for noncitizens who vote in federal elections. Violators can also be deported. When people in the U.S. register to vote, they swear under penalty of perjury that they are U.S. citizens.
In Pennsylvania, only people who meet various requirements, including citizenship, can register to vote. Under the state constitution, a voter must “have been a citizen of the United States at least one month,” in addition to meeting state and voting district residency requirements.
If a noncitizen attempted to vote in a Pennsylvania election, they would be subject to penalties, including imprisonment and deportation, said Ellen Lyon, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of State.
The department is “not aware of any instances of noncitizens registering to vote or voting in any recent elections,” Lyon said in an email to The Associated Press.
In recent months, the potential of immigrants voting illegally in the U.S. has erupted into a top election-year issue for some Republicans.
Studies show noncitizens aren’t illegally voting in high numbers, according to Ron Hayduk, a political science professor at San Francisco State University who studies noncitizen voting laws.
While there have been some reports of noncitizens illegally casting ballots, such incidents are “infinitesimal,” Hayduk said.
Research by the Brennan Center for Justice in 2017 looked at 42 jurisdictions across the U.S. in the 2016 election, and reported that of 23.5 million votes cast, election officials found about 30 cases of potential noncitizen voting that they referred for prosecution or further investigation.
A Georgia audit of its voter rolls conducted in 2022 found fewer than 2,000 instances of noncitizens attempting to register to vote over the last 25 years, none of which succeeded. Millions of new Georgia voters registered during that time.
In 2017, Pennsylvania acknowledged that it had to fix a glitch that allowed noncitizen immigrants to register to vote when getting a driver’s license. At one point, state election officials said noncitizen immigrants may have cast 544 ballots illegally — out of more than 93 million ballots in elections spanning 18 years, going back to 2000.
Claims that noncitizens are voting in large numbers have been “clearly debunked over and over and over again,” said Daniel Mallinson, an associate professor of public policy and administration at Penn State.
Though no state constitutions explicitly allow noncitizens to vote, some municipalities in California, Maryland and Vermont, as well as the District of Columbia, do allow voting by noncitizens in some local elections such as for school board and city council.
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This story is part of an explanatory series focused on Pennsylvania elections produced collaboratively by WITF in Harrisburg and The Associated Press.
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The AP receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here.
