This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

President Donald Trump this week unveiled another effort by his administration to raise questions about the outcome of the 2020 election he lost: an unusual U.S. Census Bureau analysis concluding with “high confidence” that 24,000 noncitizens illegally voted in the 2020 election.

Trump touted the finding on social media and wrote that it supports his long-running false claims that he actually won the 2020 election.

But experts said there are substantial questions about the Census Bureau study’s methodology and validity. And even if 24,000 noncitizens had voted in 2020, it wouldn’t have been enough to change the election’s outcome.

The seven-page Census Bureau report said researchers examined more than 128 million voters in the 2020 presidential election and determined with “high confidence” that more than 24,000 of them were noncitizens. If so, that number would be less than 0.019% of the sample.

Trump said census researchers are still analyzing another 32 million voters and predicted that the number of illegal noncitizen votes would “explode” after that was done.

The Census Bureau did not respond to a request for comment. But experts said some aspects of the bureau’s release raise fundamental questions.

Most Census Bureau reports identify the authors of the report and detail the reliability of the data they are using. This analysis did neither.

“A properly done Census report would have had that information and the fact that it is missing is glaring and makes me think that they are hiding something,” said Beth Jarosz, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Massive Data Institute who has worked as a contractor on Census Bureau reports.

Terri Ann Lowenthal, who served as staff director for the U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee overseeing the Census Bureau from 1987 to 1994, said the report’s minimal methodological information raised questions about the accuracy of the results.

Lowenthal said the report was “beneath the Census Bureau’s stellar reputation.” The failure to include the names of any career staff members, she said, suggested that the work may have been done by someone with a political agenda “and may not reflect the sound, reputable analysis for which the Census Bureau is known.”

Trump administration searches for noncitizen voters

Trump has focused the efforts of his second administration on rooting out voter fraud, especially any instance of illegal voting by noncitizens, which audits, investigations, and studies have found happens only rarely. But the federal government doesn’t possess a comprehensive database of citizens, and efforts to match different data sets have so far yielded inaccurate results.

The administration pushed states to run millions of records of registered voters through a revamped federal data tool to check if they were citizens. But election officials found the system, which cross-referenced federal records from various federal agencies, in some cases erroneously flagged citizens. In June, a federal judge blocked the use of the overhauled tool, finding it threatened privacy and voting rights.

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In a televised primetime speech on July 16, Trump said his administration had found more than 250,000 noncitizen voters on the voter rolls of just four states: New Jersey, California, Pennsylvania, and Nevada. Officials in all four states pushed back on Trump’s claims and said they didn’t understand how the administration arrived at those numbers. The Trump administration has yet to provide any detail on its methodology in that case either.

The president has lobbied for federal legislation to require people registering to vote to prove their citizenship, and he repeated that call when releasing the Census Bureau findings Tuesday, describing it as his highest legislative priority. But the effort has stalled in the U.S. Senate. He has also released two sweeping executive orders on elections, but their major provisions have been so far blocked by federal courts.

Questions surround Trump administration’s data analysis

The voting data used in the analysis was provided by Data-Clear, a business in Virginia that secured an $885,000 Census Bureau contract from former President Joe Biden’s administration in 2024. Carolyn Carlson, Data-Clear’s president and founder, said she provided nationwide voting data to the bureau that year as part of a project to try and prevent an undercount of minority voters in the 2030 census.

Carlson said she was surprised to see the data she provided used in the new review of noncitizen voters.

The report says the Census Bureau matched the Data-Clear voter files with federal immigration records to determine if people were citizens and eligible to vote. The report offers only general descriptions of how and when it was able to match verifiable information.

Justin Levitt, an election law specialist at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who worked in the Biden White House on voting rights issues, said a typical analysis would include caveats around the possible margin of error, and the 24,000 figure for noncitizen voters could be within it. However, the Census Bureau report doesn’t specify one.

“In most statistical exercises, it’s not unthinkable that there might be 0.019% false positives – and if that were the case here, that would turn the total conclusions to zero,” he said.

Should the analysis hold up to scrutiny, the underlying numbers showed that they would not involve enough voters to change the result of the 2020 election. The report said it found 500 noncitizens illegally cast ballots in Wisconsin, which Trump lost to Biden by more than 20,000 votes. The survey said it identified 1,100 noncitizens who cast ballots in Arizona, which Trump lost by more than 10,000 votes. And the report cannot say whether those voters supported Trump or Biden.

In response to questions about whether the release supported the president’s assertion, the White House responded with a link to a social media post by U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

The post Experts question new Trump admin analysis claiming noncitizens voted in 2020 appeared first on Salon.com.

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

Tensions between state election officials and the Trump administration are rising as we head into the heart of the midterm election season. Frustrations boiled over on Monday during a rare election security call hosted by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency for state officials. During the call, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes unloaded on the agency.

CISA used to be a go-to shop for many states looking for help ensuring that their elections weren’t hacked, targeted, or undermined by cyberattacks or foreign interference. CISA provided states with classified security briefings on threats, helped ensure that state voting equipment wasn’t vulnerable to cyberattacks, and worked with election leaders to game out potential risks.

All that changed when Donald Trump returned to the White House last year. The second Trump administration scaled back its support for states, cut back CISA staff, and launched an investigation of its former leader, whom Trump accused of disloyalty because he pushed back on the president’s false claims that the 2020 election was rigged. CISA has not had a permanent director since the start of Trump’s second term.

Changes at CISA have paired with the president’s broad focus on controlling how elections are run. The federal government is threatening to arrest election officials if they allow noncitizens to vote. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has vowed to withhold federal funds from states that don’t implement Trump administration election overhaul proposals. A coalition of Democratic states and officials has sued the Department of Homeland Security in a suit that accuses the Trump administration of withholding Federal Emergency Management Agency funding in an attempt to coerce states into enacting disputed election changes.

With all that as backdrop, CISA organized this week’s call – and things didn’t go too well.

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After more than a year of near silence, elections officials wondered if CISA would step up to offer classified intelligence briefings on emerging cyber threats from hostile countries, specialized testing of election equipment, or training on how to prepare for potential problems on Election Day.

Instead, CISA leaders provided what one participant characterized as a generic “CYA” (cover your a**) briefing that offered state officials few assurances that the federal government would help thwart threats this November.

Participants said acting CISA Director Nick Andersen and Jim Harrell, the assistant director for integrated operations, offered no concrete support for the 2026 election, which is less than 90 days away. Instead, the participants said, CISA leadership seemed more focused on the 2028 presidential election.

When they were done, according to participants, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, lashed out at the CISA officials. Fontes blasted the Trump administration for threatening state election officials and made it clear he had no confidence in their leadership, they said.

“Fontes got testy with them,” said one participant on the call who asked not to be identified. “‘I don’t trust you,’ [Fontes told the CISA officials.] ‘Your boss came out there and said: We are going to criminalize the work you do. Why should we trust you?’”

When asked about the call, Fontes confirmed that he’d made those comments and expanded on his frustrations

“They don’t work with us, they work against us,” Fontes told Votebeat. “Why should I trust them?”

Fontes said it was difficult for state and local elections officials to have confidence they would get support from the federal government when the administration treats them like an adversary rather than a partner. He and others on the call said CISA leaders offered few assurances they would provide much support in the coming weeks.

“They just wholly and completely abandoned their duties and threatened prosecution,” Fontes said. “If they want to apologize for threatening us and ruining perfectly good systems, that’s a good start.”

CISA did not respond to requests for comment on the call.

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, also a Democrat, echoed Fontes’s frustrations.

“It’s unhelpful to have political leaders, including the secretary of Homeland Security, hinting at imprisoning election administrators who don’t do what they want,” Simon told Votebeat. “That’s just not helpful.”

Simon said Minnesota and other states have spent months working to fill the gaps left by the drop-off in CISA support.

“It’s pretty clear states are almost entirely on their own this election cycle and cannot rely on the federal government for election assistance,” said Simon.

Not everyone on the call came away with a sour taste in their mouth, though. Some participants described it as a tentative move that could help repair the strained relationship between state and federal leaders working on elections.

Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, also a Democrat, described the call as a “positive step” in rebuilding relations between CISA and state election officials.

“While this engagement is encouraging, CISA and our other federal partners must focus on continuing to rebuild trust with election officials,” Hobbs said. “Over the last two years, we have watched this administration systematically dismantle many of the election security resources in place at the federal level.”

With the November election fast approaching, he said, “election officials need sustained commitment to supporting local elections, not renewed attention only as major elections approach. Meaningful support will do more to rebuild relationships than words alone.”

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

The post “I don’t trust you”: Tensions reach boiling point on election security call for state leaders appeared first on Salon.com.