{"id":167870,"date":"2026-04-16T20:20:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T20:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/167870\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T20:20:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T20:20:07","slug":"pennsylvania-official-who-exposed-noncitizen-voting-says-threat-is-exaggerated-spotlight-pa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/167870\/","title":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania official who exposed noncitizen voting says threat is exaggerated | Spotlight Pa"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article is made possible through Spotlight PA\u2019s<\/a>
\ncollaboration with Votebeat<\/a>, a
\nnonpartisan news organization covering local election
\nadministration and voting. Sign up for Votebeat’s
\nfree newsletters here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The potential risk of noncitizens illegally casting ballots has
\ndominated the national conversation on election policy in recent
\nyears. But one major voice on the issue hasn\u2019t been heard.<\/p>\n

Pennsylvania is home to someone who has perhaps more experience
\naddressing noncitizen voting than anyone else, a Republican who
\nuncovered hundreds of noncitizens had registered to vote and cast
\nballots in Philadelphia: Secretary of the Commonwealth Al
\nSchmidt.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’ve always heard my whole life, even though I grew up in
\nWestern Pennsylvania, about concerns about voter fraud and voting
\nirregularities in Philadelphia elections,\u201d Schmidt told Votebeat
\nand Spotlight PA in a recent interview. \u201cSo I wanted to be able to
\nsort out fact from fiction.\u201d<\/p>\n

But despite this experience, Schmidt hasn\u2019t embraced the
\nexaggerated claims about the prevalence of noncitizen voting common
\nin today\u2019s political rhetoric. Instead, he feels officials need to
\nstrike a balance between election security and voter access.<\/p>\n

PennDOT error led to noncitizens registering to vote<\/p>\n

When Schmidt came into office as a Philadelphia city
\ncommissioner in 2012, he began looking into various claims of voter
\nfraud. Eventually, he discovered that an error with the
\nPennsylvania Department of Transportation\u2019s motor voter system \u2014
\nwhich helps register voters who are obtaining a driver\u2019s license \u2014
\nwas enabling noncitizens to register. (In Pennsylvania, noncitizens
\nare permitted to obtain a driver\u2019s license.)<\/p>\n

As Schmidt explained to
\na state Senate committee in 2017<\/a>, despite PennDOT having the
\npaperwork confirming the individuals\u2019 noncitizen status, they
\nweren\u2019t prevented from interacting with the voter registration
\nscreens when completing the license application process. The
\nprogramming error that allowed noncitizens to register was fixed in
\n2017, and state Auditor General Tim DeFoor is currently conducting
\nan audit to assess the system.<\/p>\n

Schmidt discovered that this glitch had led to 168 noncitizens
\nregistering to vote in Philadelphia alone and he discovered an
\nadditional 52 registered by other means. Schmidt found that
\ncollectively they cast 227 votes in the years they were registered.
\nBut the scope of the problem statewide was potentially much
\nlarger.<\/p>\n

The glitch that allowed them to register dated
\nback to the mid-1990s<\/a>, and in 2018, the state
\nsent letters to 11,198 voters across the state<\/a> asking them to
\nconfirm their eligibility, though not necessarily meaning they were
\nnoncitizens. At least 1,915 of those voters were later confirmed to
\nbe eligible, and another 501 registrations were canceled or had
\nbeen canceled previously. The state said this week it did not have
\nan exact count of how many noncitizens were registered as a result
\nof the error.<\/p>\n

For Schmidt, the incident wasn\u2019t just a bureaucratic or election
\nintegrity issue; it also became a personal, human story. Many of
\nthe noncitizen voters Schmidt identified were in the process of
\napplying for their citizenship but were at risk of having their
\napplications rejected \u2014
\nor even being deported<\/a> \u2014 because a simple technical glitch
\nallowed them to register to vote when they weren\u2019t legally allowed
\nto. Schmidt went to several immigration court hearings to testify
\nabout how these registrations had been the result of the
\ngovernment\u2019s mistake.<\/p>\n

Schmidt suggested many of the noncitizens who registered through
\nPennDOT might not have known they were doing anything illegal,
\nsince they had already presented the department with paperwork
\nshowing they weren\u2019t citizens and were given the option to register
\nanyway. Language barriers or the habit of just clicking through
\nscreens to get to the end could have also played a role, he
\nsaid.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to emphasize it’s an election integrity issue, and it is
\njust a human issue in terms of being decent when it comes to people
\nwho want to become new Americans and any of us would be happy to
\nhave as our friends or neighbors,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Schmidt still emphasizes the rarity of noncitizen voting<\/p>\n

That episode represents one of the largest instances of illegal
\nnoncitizen voting in recent history. But it still represented only
\na fraction of a percent of Philadelphia\u2019s roughly 800,000
\nregistered voters at the time. And other recent investigations into
\nnoncitizen voting have turned up even fewer examples.<\/p>\n

A recent audit of Utah\u2019s 2.1 million registered voters
\nfound only one noncitizen registered<\/a>, and they hadn\u2019t actually
\nvoted. Michigan discovered
\nonly 15 potential noncitizens voting<\/a> in the 2024 election. An
\n
\naudit of Georgia’s voter rolls in 2024<\/a> found only 20 noncitizen
\nregistered voters out of the 8.2 million voters registered in the
\nstate. Even in Florida, where Republican state leaders have been
\nfocused on noncitizen voting,
\nan audit<\/a> discovered only 198 voters the state deemed \u201clikely\u201d
\nnoncitizens.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing that became very clear through that research and all
\nevidence suggests that noncitizens voting in elections in the
\nUnited States occurs very rarely,\u201d Schmidt said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t mean
\nthat it\u2019s not important. Like I said before, every vote is
\nprecious, and we want to make sure that we do everything we can to
\nsafeguard and strengthen election integrity. But there\u2019s no
\nevidence to suggest that it happens in any widespread way
\nwhatsoever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, fears about noncitizen voting have risen to the
\nforefront of election policy debates in recent years, in large part
\ndue to President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

After losing the 2020 election, he
\nsuggested without evidence<\/a> that his loss was due to immigrants
\nbeing registered to vote. He made similar claims
\nduring the 2024 campaign<\/a>. Last year, he
\nsigned an executive order<\/a> that sought to mandate proof of
\ncitizenship when registering to vote.<\/p>\n

The Department of Justice is
\ncollecting voter rolls<\/a> from states and
\ncoordinating with the Department of Homeland Security<\/a> to check
\nif noncitizens are voting, and Republicans in Congress are pushing
\nhard to pass a bill, the
\nSAVE America Act<\/a>, which would require proof of citizenship when
\nregistering to vote \u2014 a step
\nsome GOP-led states have already taken on their own<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Asked what he thinks when he hears this rhetoric, and
\nspecifically when Pennsylvania is brought into the conversation,
\nSchmidt said people should view the instances of confirmed fraud
\nthat are brought up as examples of the system working properly.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important that we, I think, see it not as a vulnerability,
\nbut as an aspect of the strength of our system, and that we are
\nsafeguarding election integrity,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen people break the
\nlaw, whether intentionally or not, they\u2019re held accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schmidt noted that seeking to identify and remove noncitizens
\nfrom voter rolls can inadvertently have harmful effects. In recent
\nyears,
\nsome states searching for noncitizens<\/a> have flagged voters for
\nremoval who were in fact citizens. A
\nrecent ProPublica investigation<\/a> found that 14% of Denton
\nCounty, Texas, voters flagged as noncitizens by a Department of
\nHomeland Security database were actually citizens after all.<\/p>\n

Schmidt said people need to be able to \u201cwalk and chew gum at the
\nsame time.\u201d Policymakers and election officials have to balance
\nbeing vigilant about fraud with not overreacting to the low level
\nat which noncitizen voting occurs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important to take it seriously,\u201d Schmidt said. \u201cBut at the
\nsame time, putting so many resources behind looking into something
\nthat there\u2019s really no evidence is occurring in any way that\u2019s
\nwidespread or systematic \u2026 if not done responsibly, again results
\nin eligible citizens being disenfranchised from that process, and
\ncertainly can do more harm than good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with
\nSpotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

BEFORE YOU GO\u2026 If you learned
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\nSpotlight PA at spotlightpa.org\/donate<\/a>.
\nSpotlight PA is funded by foundations and readers
\nlike you<\/a> who are committed to accountability
\njournalism that gets results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article is made possible through Spotlight PA\u2019s collaboration with Votebeat, a nonpartisan news organization covering local election…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[13437,13438,11546,10655,296,13439,7202,139,3703,28,30,29,50,13440,3702,13436,85,13441,13442,4500],"class_list":["post-167870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-bradford","tag-centre","tag-clinton","tag-columbia","tag-local","tag-lycoming","tag-montour","tag-news","tag-northumberland","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-politics","tag-potter","tag-snyder","tag-spotlight_pa","tag-state","tag-sullivan","tag-tioga","tag-union"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}