More than 30,000 people who had identified themselves as non-citizens may have been mistakenly added to voter registration rolls across at least a dozen US states since 2000, according to a Reuters review of official records.
The cases occurred in states governed by both Democrats and Republicans and were linked largely to software glitches and clerical mistakes involving driver’s licence and state identification applications. Reuters said the figure is inexact because some state records remain subject to revision.
The affected states include California, Illinois, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Virginia, while New Jersey recently disclosed that a technology error had added about 6,600 non-citizens to its voter rolls between June 2023 and June 2024.
Reuters reported that it could not determine how many of those mistakenly registered individuals actually cast ballots. Experts cited in the report said the numbers were too small relative to more than 170 million registered US voters to affect election outcomes.
The findings come amid a political dispute over proposals requiring proof of US citizenship for voter registration. Supporters say stronger verification would help prevent ineligible registrations, while critics argue that such requirements may create additional barriers for eligible voters.
The Reuters review found that bureaucratic errors, rather than evidence of a coordinated effort to register non-citizens, accounted for many of the identified cases.
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