Trump’s noncitizen voting fraud claims will backfire. Just look at history
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Thirty years ago this fall, a Republican politician cried electoral fraud after losing a close race.
Orange County Rep. Bob Dornan couldn’t accept the most logical explanations for why Loretta Sanchez beat him in a historic upset: that voters had tired of his polarizing politics. That his Latino-majority district wanted one of their own to represent them. That he was an ideologue who never brought anything back from D.C. for his constituents.
Instead, Dornan and his supporters settled on the craziest excuse of them all: Illegal immigrants.
The White House published a series of heavily redacted documents that echo debunked fraud claims about the 2020 election.
California voters were passing anti-immigrant laws by the boatful, so Dornan’s fevered tales about nonprofits registering noncitizens to vote and take him down landed with Republicans. A compliant Congress investigated Dornan’s claims, while local lawmakers proposed bills that would force voters to show government-issued identification every time they cast a ballot — a voter suppression tactic going back to the segregationist South.
The congressional investigation flopped like a soccer player fishing to draw a red card, finally concluding in 1998. Yes, noncitizens did vote for Sanchez, but only an infinitesimal number — less than 1% of the total votes tallied and not enough to overturn the results. No one was charged for illegally voting on purpose or improperly registering noncitizens to vote.
When Dornan ran again in 1998, with volunteers vowing to pursue any election irregularities, Sanchez walloped him, and he was swept into the dustbin of political history.
I teach this episode in my O.C. history college classes as a case study in what happens when political parties succumb to the spell of a vindictive demagogue who blames everyone for their failures except themselves. I also point out that Dornan had the last laugh: the idea that illegal immigrants regularly vote in elections, throwing them toward Democrats, has become gospel for many Republicans.
And here we are.
On Thursday, President Trump’s obsession over losing to Joe Biden in 2020 reached a phlegmatic nadir with a speech on debunked election fraud theories that weaved in everything from communist China to deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro to — who else? — alleged noncitizen voters.
The tirade was so pathetic and noneventful that most networks didn’t bother to air it. Even Fox News host Sean Hannity — whose tongue is probably two parts shoe polish after spending the last decade as Trump’s personal spit shine — moved on just minutes after Trump finished.
The president insisted that the U.S. Senate pass a bill ahead of this November’s midterms, mandating in the name of election integrity that voters show proof of citizenship before casting a ballot.
In California, a clown car of MAGA loyalists — state Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, state Sen. Tony Strickland, wannabe Southern California U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli — are pushing something similar. Proposition 39 would require California election officials to verify the citizenship of registered voters and require voters to show government-issued identification when they cast a ballot.
By law, voters in federal elections must be U.S. citizens. Only a handful of municipalities allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. Despite Trump’s trumpeting of supposed evidence that 278,000 noncitizens are registered to vote in California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada, actual instances of them casting a ballot are as rare today as in Dornan’s time.
That hasn’t stopped Trump and his lackeys from claiming, as Dornan and his supporters did, that they are trying to restore faith in a system corrupted by liberals and their undocumented puppets. But, just like back then, this amounts to a dog whistle for people freaked out about changing demographics and massive GOP midterm losses.
It’s the last, most dangerous gasp of a wheezing political movement whose supporters are clinging to power at all costs and just can’t understand why more and more voters are tired of Trump’s flailing foreign policy and failing economy.
Voter ID appears headed for California’s November ballot. What you need to know
These people are so delusional that they point to last month’s California primaries as proof of election fraud, arguing that the results in two prominent races should have been different.
No Republican has won a statewide election in 20 years, so it’s not surprising that Republican Steve Hilton finished second to Democrat Xavier Becerra in the gubernatorial primary, with both advancing to the general election. Nor was it a shock that in the primary for Los Angeles mayor, progressive incumbent Karen Bass and democratic socialist City Councilmember Nithya Raman finished first and second over Republican reality television star Spencer Pratt.
That didn’t stop Trump from insisting that both Republicans should have won outright and crying conspiracy when they didn’t. The president continued his laughable tune in his White House speech.
“Took a month to count the votes,” he whined about California’s sloth-like approach to counting ballots. “I wonder what they were doing. This is worse than any Third World country. There’s no Third World country that has elections like we have.”
Actually, many Third World countries elect despots like Trump — but that’s neither here nor there.
A May poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found that Proposition 39 was in a statistical dead heat, with 49% of voters favoring it and 51% opposed. All Prop. 39’s opponents have to do is cite Trump’s stark-raving mad comments about electoral fraud, and support for the ballot initiative will melt faster than the Sierra snowpack.
The Republican crusade against imaginary noncitizen voters may pay off in the short run but will inevitably, spectacularly backfire.
Look at what happened in my native Orange County. Sanchez’s victory was the first ripple in a blue wave that eventually turned O.C. purple. Our once-mighty GOP is now increasingly isolated to wealthier pockets of the county and no longer commands national attention — hell, they couldn’t even deliver O.C. to Trump in any of his elections.
The crazy thing is, when Republicans put in the work to appeal to immigrant and Latino voters instead of obsessing about how they’re supposedly anti-democracy invaders, it pays off. Just look at 2024, when a record number of Latino GOP legislators won seats in California and Trump won a larger share of the national Latino electorate than any Republican presidential candidate ever had.
That happened because the party largely stayed quiet on noncitizen voting and focused on what swing voters wanted to hear: a promise to clamp down on unchecked migration and too much wokeness, while fattening average Americans’ pocketbooks.
Trump’s success with Latino voters seemed to represent a tectonic shift in American politics. Now, it feels like an aberration.
Trump still doesn’t seem to get how desperate the situation is for Republicans, just four months before election day, and how much of it is of his own making.
Near the end of his speech, he sputtered, “The only reason you wouldn’t do [mandated voter ID] is you want to cheat because your policies are so bad, and your candidates are so pathetic that you can’t get away or can’t get elected any other way.”
Paging Bob Dornan ...
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Ideas expressed in the piece
The article argues that Trump’s insistence on widespread noncitizen voting fraud repeats a pattern seen in the 1990s with former Orange County Rep. Bob Dornan, whose allegations of illegal immigrant voting triggered investigations that ultimately found only a tiny number of improper ballots, far too few to affect the outcome of the election. Decades of research and recent reviews likewise show that noncitizen voting and in-person voter fraud are vanishingly rare and not remotely on the scale needed to “rig” elections.[1][7][8][23][27]
Building on this historical parallel, the piece contends that contemporary Republican claims that hundreds of thousands of noncitizens are registered and voting are not supported by credible evidence, and that detailed investigations of such sweeping allegations repeatedly shrink the supposed numbers to a handful of cases or clerical errors once experts review the data.[7][11][18][27]
The column links Trump’s rhetoric and measures like California’s Proposition 39 to a long U.S. history of voter suppression, noting that voter ID and proof-of-citizenship rules have often been justified by fears of undocumented fraud but in practice function as barriers that disproportionately affect immigrants, Latinos, and other minority communities, echoing tactics used after the end of federal Voting Rights Act oversight in many states.[2][3][6][8][12]
The article emphasizes that California already requires voters to provide identifying information, such as a driver’s license or Social Security number, during registration and that first-time voters who lack verified ID information can be asked to show identification at the polls, undercutting claims that current rules allow noncitizens to vote freely.[1][4][16][20]
The piece describes Proposition 39—which would require every California voter to present a government-issued ID in person or provide ID digits on mail ballots, and would mandate annual reports on citizenship verification—as a solution in search of a problem, arguing that it would add bureaucracy and potential disenfranchisement without addressing any demonstrated threat of noncitizen voting.[5][10][15][17][20]
The article suggests that Trump’s highly public and inflammatory fraud claims could backfire politically in California by tying Proposition 39 to his broader narrative about “third world” elections, thereby alienating swing voters and helping opponents portray the initiative as an extension of his extreme attacks on the legitimacy of U.S. elections.[4][17][22][24]
Drawing on Orange County’s political evolution, the column argues that Republicans have fared better when they invest in outreach to immigrant and Latino voters and focus on issues such as economic opportunity and concerns over migration, rather than depicting noncitizens as a voting threat; it points to recent years when Latino Republicans and Trump gained ground while the party largely avoided noncitizen voting rhetoric, and suggests that returning to those fraud narratives risks undoing those gains.[7][18][21][23]
Finally, the article contends that the GOP’s obsession with imaginary noncitizen voters is a “last gasp” of a movement unsettled by demographic change, arguing that by clinging to debunked fraud claims and pushing restrictive voting rules, Republicans are accelerating their own marginalization in diverse areas like Orange County instead of adapting to a changing electorate.[3][8][12][27]
Different views on the topic
Proponents of Proposition 39 and similar measures argue that requiring government-issued identification and explicit proof of citizenship is a commonsense way to ensure that only eligible U.S. citizens vote, framing these rules as bipartisan reforms that strengthen election integrity rather than efforts to suppress participation. Supporters highlight that current law already demands voters attest to their citizenship under penalty of perjury, and they contend that constitutional amendments like Prop. 39 would simply add clearer, enforceable safeguards.[9][18][20][26][21]
In addition, advocates of stricter verification say that complex voter-registration systems can produce errors, including mistaken entries for noncitizens, and that periodic reports about large numbers of suspected noncitizen registrants justify more rigorous checks. They stress that when officials try to reconcile citizenship data with voter rolls, apparent discrepancies fuel public concern, which they believe should be addressed with stronger verification rules even if many flagged cases ultimately prove to be clerical mistakes.[11][18][21]
Supporters of voter ID requirements further maintain that most voters already possess acceptable identification, and that proposals such as Proposition 39 include free state-issued voter ID cards or the option to use the last four digits of an ID number for mail-in ballots, which they say minimizes burdens on low-income or elderly voters while still providing a uniform way to confirm identity at the polls.[5][9][13][15][20]
At the same time, conservative politicians and commentators have repeatedly pointed to isolated prosecutions for illegal voting—including some involving noncitizens—as proof that current safeguards are imperfect, arguing that even small numbers of improper ballots can undermine confidence in close elections and therefore merit stringent ID and citizenship requirements.[21][23][27][8]
Supporters of Trump’s broader election-fraud narrative contend that lax identification standards, widespread mail-in voting, and perceived irregularities in ballot counting have eroded trust in elections, and they argue that strong voter ID and proof-of-citizenship rules are necessary to reassure skeptical voters that the system is secure and that results in high-profile races truly reflect the will of eligible citizens.[4][14][18][21]
Some backers of Prop. 39 and similar initiatives also note that multiple states are moving toward voter ID and citizenship-verification amendments, asserting that California should not lag behind what they describe as a national trend toward tightening election procedures and enshrining ID standards in state constitutions.[14][20][26]
Finally, proponents push back against the charge that voter ID laws are racially targeted or suppressive, insisting that the requirements apply uniformly, that free IDs and flexible documentation options can mitigate barriers, and that the priority should be preventing any ineligible voting rather than focusing on studies that find only rare instances of noncitizen ballots.[5][9][13][19][25]
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