Wisconsin election experts said a Census Bureau report claiming 500 noncitizens voted in the state in 2020 is not credible, with Marquette professor Philip Rocco calling it “meaningless” and “indistinguishable from having zero evidence.”
The criticism centers on how the report matched 128 million voter records with third-party data: it treated voters lacking proof of citizenship as noncitizens, omitted key details on voter rolls and matching standards, and was unsigned despite calling itself a “beginning analysis.”
Rocco said the report’s 0.02% noncitizen-voter rate is far below the 1%-6% false-positive range researchers typically expect in Census-linked data, especially after Social Security numbers are removed for privacy.
Wisconsin Elections Commission officials said there is no evidence of significant noncitizen voting and noted audits by local officials, the DMV, Corrections Department and ERIC; the agency has seen only four alleged citizenship-related fraud cases since 2015, none in 2020.
Even if accurate, 500 votes would not have changed any Wisconsin federal result in 2020, when Joe Biden carried the state by 20,608 votes; President Donald Trump cited the report on Aug. 18 to renew his fraud claims.