Pennsylvania officials are calling on the Trump administration to provide evidence backing up their claim that over 14,000 non-citizens are registered to vote in the Commonwealth.
Earlier this month, the federal Department of Homeland Security said they had identified over 250,000 non-citizens which were allegedly registered to vote across four states, including 14,576 in Pennsylvania. That announcement followed a primetime presidential address on July 16, which President Donald Trump used to revisit long-debunked allegations of widescale voter fraud.
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt responded to the DHS claims on Wednesday, sending a letter to Homeland Security Sec. Markwayne Mullin asking the department to provide the data and methodology used.
“Your July 16, 2026, letter claims the Department of Homeland Security has identified as many as 14,576 non-citizens purportedly registered to vote in Pennsylvania. Notably, DHS has not identified its methodology or what data it relied on in reaching this conclusion,” Schmidt said.
Schmidt — a Republican who investigated claims of voter fraud during his time as a Philadelphia City Commissioner — has previously debunked claims of widespread voter fraud in the Commonwealth. Counties regularly maintain voter records, and any improperly registered voters are flagged and addressed.
“We take every single claim of someone doing something illegal related to our elections very seriously,” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said earlier this month in response to the administration’s claims. “Just yesterday [July 16], someone was sentenced here in Pennsylvania to six months house arrest for voting twice for Donald Trump.”
This week’s letter also alludes to issues with a federal database used by DHS — called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database — which have included mistakenly identifying U.S. citizens as non-citizens and failing to flag dangerous individuals during background checks.
“As you know, past analyses of voter lists have relied on faulty methodologies that can lead to inaccurate results and false claims about the citizenship status of eligible voters,” Schmidt said.
In order to evaluate DHS’s claims and determine next steps, Schmidt asked Mullin to provide the methodology, data sources, dates the department obtained Pennsylvania voter records and other relevant information.
“All evidence has shown that noncitizen voting is extremely rare across the country, including in Pennsylvania,” Schmidt told FOX43 in a statement on July 17.