Noncitizens are ineligible to vote in US federal elections, but online claims that the state of California let hundreds of thousands register as voters are resurfacing ahead of the 2026 midterms. The figure relates to the number of noncitizens who were disqualified from serving as jurors, but there is no evidence those people were also registered voters; jury summonses can be sent to any state resident holding a driver’s license, which can be legally obtained without citizenship.
“This is how OUT OF CONTROL California is. 449,000 REGISTERED VOTERS couldn’t perform jury duty because they weren’t citizens. But they are REGISTERED VOTERS! A half a million of them,” says a September 3, 2026 post on X.
A screenshot of an X post taken on September 9, 2026
The claim has spread for months across platforms, including on Facebook, Instagram and Threads. It also appeared on TikTok in Spanish.
False accusations of widespread noncitizen voting have circulated for years — including in a widely questioned US Census Bureau report that Donald Trump’s administration released in August, and during a controversial White House speech the US president delivered in July.
US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin also sent California Secretary of State Shirley Weber a letter in July claiming a preliminary review had found 190,832 noncitizens registered to vote in the state (archived here).
But Weber responded that she had “serious doubts” about the reliability of that data. Her office had not given a voter registration list to DHS, citing state law prohibiting the sharing of voters’ sensitive information (archived here, here and here).
Noncitizen voting in federal elections is illegal, and audits and independent research have shown it to be exceedingly rare (archived here and here).
And there is no evidence that noncitizens disqualified from jury duty were also registered to vote.
Jury rolls
The posts do not specify the year when the 449,000 disqualified jurors were identified. The same figure has circulated online since at least 2018, with fact-checking organizations previously finding that it was not evidence of fraud impacting California’s voter rolls.
AFP sought records detailing the number of disqualified jurors from the Judicial Council of California, but the request was still pending at the time of publication.
PolitiFact reported that the closest number to the figure appeared in a fiscal year 2016-17 report from the Council that showed 449,404 out of a total 1,096,478 disqualified jurors had been eliminated due to their citizenship status.
But courts do not send jury summonses solely to registered voters.
“In addition to voter registration lists, courts also use Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and state tax filer lists to select potential jurors,” Karen Datangel, a public affairs officer for the Judicial Council of California, told AFP in a September 9, 2026 email.
The DMV list can include noncitizens because former governor Jerry Brown signed a law allowing undocumented residents who meet all other licensing requirements to be issued driver’s licenses (archived here). More than 1 million people have obtained the special license since the law went into effect in 2015.
Noncitizens also pay taxes in California, potentially placing them on the state tax filer list (archived here).
Additionally, some California jurisdictions have passed measures to allow noncitizens to vote for local school boards. Such voters remain ineligible to cast ballots for federal races.
Safeguards
The California Secretary of State’s office says voter rolls are continuously updated with registration data “crosschecked with both state and federal agencies” (archived here).
“Each voter must attest to the truthfulness of registration information under penalty of perjury,” it says.
AFP contacted California’s Elections Division for more information, but a response was not forthcoming.
On August 28, 2026, a Honduran national living in the San Fernando Valley was arrested on a federal criminal complaint charging him with fraudulent voter registration (archived here). The complaint said he had not actually voted.
“The law is working as it’s supposed to,” Pamela Smith, president and CEO of the nonpartisan election group Verified Voter, told AFP on September 2 (archived here).
She said the “severe penalties” — including felony charges if a noncitizen actually votes — dissuade ineligible people from registering.
“That’s not worth the risk for somone who does not have citizenship,” she said.
The conservative Heritage Foundation tracks election fraud and has recorded just 40 criminal convictions in California for filing false registrations since 1982.
It cites only two cases of noncitizens convicted for voting in the state in the same time period, with one being a Mexican man who voted for Trump (archived here and here).
AFP has previously debunked several additional claims alleging voter fraud in California.
Read more coverage of misinformation impacting the 2026 midterm elections here.