Trust the Vote

President Trump has been promoting the notion of rigged elections in the U.S. for over 10 years.

His discredited claims have involved vote flipping, fake and dead people voting and that over 50,000 Georgians were turned away at the polls in his 2020 loss to Joe Biden. His administration's recent focus on noncitizens voting is only one of many discredited claims.

Numbers from the Trump Administration between July and October of 2026 can only be described as erratic. A July 17th press release from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claimed there were 190,832 noncitizens registered to vote in California. An August, 2026 report from the U.S. Census Bureau put the number in California at 4,300. The Justice Department's October 15, 2026 lawsuit claimed there are more than 20,000 noncitizens registered to vote in California.

In rejecting the Justice Department's California lawsuit, the judge said "Given the vagueness of Plaintiff's descriptions of its procedures and the unreliability of its similar claims in other states, the Court cannot conclude that Plaintiff's process is credible. In Nevada, DHS initially identified up to 15,903 registered voters as noncitizens based on 'high-confidence' matches, but later reduced that number to 6,218, and then to 185 after conducting its manual review. Nevada officials later confirmed that all 185 individuals were citizens."

The July 17th DHS press release also claimed there were 14,576 noncitizen voters registered in Pennsylvania. Only 9 of them have been indicted. Pennsylvania has over 9 million registered voters. That represents 1 noncitizen voter in 1 million registered voters.

Idaho has 1,038,941 registered voters. Idaho's Republican Secretary of State Phil McGrane touted their recent use of DHS's Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system. He said "we ultimately referred only 34 cases to state police for criminal investigation. The police then referred 15 to the Justice Department for prosecution." That's only 1 referral to state police for every 30,550 voters.

ICE charged 19 foreign nationals with voting in the entire 2016 election. A Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) analysis of The Heritage Foundation's Election Fraud Cases database found only 77 instances of noncitizens voting between 1999 and 2023. A Brennan Center study analyzing 23.5 million votes across 42 jurisdictions in the 2016 general election found approximately 30 instances of noncitizens casting votes. There simply isn't any evidence of widespread voting by noncitizens.

Vote with confidence and be wary of the rigged election claims that are sure to come.

Lloyd Leighton is a Realtor who previously served as the National Association of Realtors federal political contact for Congressman Doug LaMalfa. He is the past chairman of the Sutter County Republican Central Committee.