MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama officials have ordered 186 noncitizens removed from the state’s voter rolls and identified 25 who appear to have cast ballots illegally, a narrow case that voting rights advocates say highlights how rare such violations are even as Republican leaders invoke “election integrity” to justify aggressive voter purges.
The removals grew out of a controversial program launched by Secretary of State Wes Allen that cross-checked voter rolls against people once issued noncitizen identification numbers and referred the list to Attorney General Steve Marshall for potential criminal investigation. A federal judge blocked the purge during the 2024 general election for violating the National Voter Registration Act’s 90-day “quiet period” before federal elections, and civil rights groups sued Allen and Marshall, arguing the effort wrongly targeted thousands of eligible, largely naturalized citizen voters.
Voting rights organizations and legal experts point to the Alabama numbers — 186 ineligible registrations and 25 suspected illegal votes in a state with more than 3.7 million registered voters — as evidence that noncitizen voting is statistically negligible, even when election officials cast a wide net. In court filings and public statements, those groups have argued that purges aimed at alleged noncitizens mainly sweep in lawful voters and fuel mistrust, while doing little to uncover actual wrongdoing.
The Alabama dispute has unfolded as Republicans aligned with former President Donald Trump continue to claim U.S. elections are vulnerable to mass fraud, part of a narrative that falsely insists the 2020 presidential race was stolen and lays the groundwork to contest future results. Nationally, federal data and independent research have repeatedly found noncitizen voting to be “vanishingly rare,” even as GOP officials push new citizenship checks, voter roll purges and criminal referrals that critics say are designed to cast doubt on legitimate outcomes.
In Alabama, Allen has framed his efforts as necessary to ensure only citizens vote, while the lawsuits accused state officials of intimidating naturalized citizens by implying that registering and voting could trigger criminal investigation. The Justice Department and private plaintiffs ultimately dropped their consolidated cases after Allen abandoned the original purge program, but voting rights advocates say the episode — capped by the small number of illegal votes found — undercuts MAGA-aligned claims of widespread fraud and shows the greater risk lies in eligible voters being wrongly kicked off the rolls.