Census Bureau Finds 24,000 Noncitizen Votes in 2020, Report Wouldn't Have Changed Outcome

The Census Bureau has identified 24,000 noncitizen votes in the 2020 election out of 128 million voter records checked so far, according to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who posted the figures on X on August 18. Another 32 million records still need to be analyzed.

Lutnick called the current tally "just the beginning" and predicted the remaining records could show "tens of thousands of additional illegal voters." President Trump went further on Truth Social, writing that the Census Bureau "proves that over 24,000 Noncitizens voted illegally" and declaring "I WON THE ELECTION!"

The math doesn't back that up. Joe Biden won Michigan by more than 1.5 million votes; the Census Bureau found 600 noncitizen ballots there. Wisconsin went to Biden by more than 20,000 votes, against 500 identified noncitizen votes. Pennsylvania: Biden by 75,000-plus, versus 1,000 noncitizen ballots. Georgia: Biden by 11,000-plus, versus 400. None of the reported numbers, even added together across all six contested swing states, come close to closing those gaps, according to figures reported by the Epoch Times.

Of the 24,000 noncitizen votes identified, 3,800 came from people born in Mexico, nearly 1,000 from Canada, and about 7,000 were listed with "country not reported." The rest came from 28 other countries.

The proven fact is a preliminary Census Bureau cross-check of voter files against citizenship records flagged 24,000 non-citizen votes among 128 million records reviewed. What's not proven, or even claimed by the report itself, is that this changes who won the 2020 election. The Epoch Times, reporting straight from the data, noted the preliminary report "does not show any significant electoral effects from the illegal ballots." Biden's national and state-level margins remain far larger than the noncitizen vote counts identified anywhere.

There is a legitimate question about whether the country's voter registration system can reliably screen out noncitizens. If 24,000 non-citizens got through the registration process undetected until a Census cross-reference caught them, that merits examination regardless of political implications. Critics of the current system have long argued voter rolls are hard to audit and rarely purged with rigor. This is a fair concern about process, separate from claims that it flipped an election.

NPR reported that a Census Bureau employee, whom NPR agreed not to name over workplace retaliation concerns, said the team behind the report included people affiliated with the America First Policy Institute, a think tank aligned with Trump. NPR also reported that data and election experts it consulted called the report's conclusions questionable, and noted the seven-page document is unauthored.

A government statistical report tied to a political advocacy group, without named authors, invites scrutiny about methodology and independence. The administration hasn't disputed the report's origins in public statements cited by these sources; it has focused entirely on touting the topline number.

The Nation's coverage ties this report into a broader argument that the administration is trying to "cook the census books" to reduce Black and Hispanic political representation, linking it to a separate push to add a citizenship question to the 2030 Census. This conflates two different policy fights: the 2020 voter-file analysis is about ballot eligibility in a past election, while the 2030 citizenship question fight concerns how future populations get counted for congressional seats and funding. Both are real controversies. They are not the same controversy.

The Census Bureau has 32 million more voter records left to check. Lutnick says results are coming "in the coming weeks." Until that full analysis is public, along with an explanation of methodology and who wrote the report, both the scale of noncitizen voting and any claim about its effect on the 2020 outcome remain unresolved. No court, election official, or bipartisan audit has certified a different outcome than the one certified in January 2021: Biden won.