ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
In the lead-up to the election, President-elect Trump and his allies repeatedly claimed that noncitizens were poised to somehow vote illegally in large numbers. There's no sign that happened. And once Trump was declared the winner, those claims melted away. As NPR's Jude Joffe-Block reports, the false claims are likely to have an impact for years to come.
JUDE JOFFE-BLOCK, BYLINE: Trump and his allies have long been repeating a message about Democrats and migrants. Here's Trump in January.
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DONALD TRUMP: They're signing them up to vote, and I believe that's why you're having millions of people pour into our country, and it could very well affect the next election, and I believe that's why they're doing it.
JOFFE-BLOCK: That baseless idea spawned a flurry of pre-election lawsuits that were seen as placeholders in case Trump lost and wanted to challenge the results. Elon Musk, the owner of the social media platform X, amplified similar claims, and right-wing influencers shared videos on X they suggested showed evidence of a supposed plot to get noncitizens to vote.
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JAMES O'KEEFE: James O'Keefe here in North Philadelphia on...
JOFFE-BLOCK: Content creator James O'Keefe posted this video just one day before the election.
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O'KEEFE: They are telling people that all you need is what's called a tin number. That's I, tin, number. And you can vote if you're not a citizen of the United States.
JOFFE-BLOCK: But by the next evening, mentions of noncitizens and voting had basically dried up online.
DANIELLE LEE TOMSON: Simply put, it did not come up in a substantial or organized conversation on Election Day.
JOFFE-BLOCK: Danielle Lee Tomson is the research manager for the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public and has been tracking false election narratives.
TOMSON: I think the folks who drew attention to those kinds of narratives to begin with have other focuses now that Trump has won.
JOFFE-BLOCK: The claim was used to help drive voters to the polls. Eight states had ballot measures reaffirming that it's illegal for noncitizens to vote. All the initiatives passed, including in North Carolina, where volunteers have been scouring voter rolls for potential ineligible voters and noncitizens. The effort is led by Jim Womack, who's also the Republican Party chair for Lee County.
JIM WOMACK: Well, it's still very early after the election. I don't think noncitizens had a dramatic impact on the election.
JOFFE-BLOCK: There's just one pending case so far. A Chinese college student in Michigan has been criminally charged for allegedly casting an early ballot even though he's not a U.S. citizen. This year Womack's group made Spanish-language signs warning that noncitizen voting is a crime that's punishable with deportation.
WOMACK: We put them up at the polling sites around the state to help prevent noncitizens from committing a crime.
JOFFE-BLOCK: Womack called it a service for noncitizens who may have been registered accidentally. But Iliana Santillan of the Latino advocacy organization El Pueblo says the signs have confused some immigrants who just became citizens.
ILIANA SANTILLAN: So we've had a few people ask about whether or not they can vote because they're naturalized citizens.
JOFFE-BLOCK: She and other advocates worry the signs may have dissuaded some eligible immigrant voters. Voting rights attorney Danielle Lang spent Election Day answering voters' calls for a national election protection hotline.
DANIELLE LANG: There were reports of folks being kind of asked about their citizenship basically on how they looked. And that is the type of thing that is the natural result of the rhetoric leading up to this election.
JOFFE-BLOCK: And that rhetoric is likely to continue. Some who promoted the noncitizen voting narrative this year have vowed to push for new voter registration policies that will require proof of citizenship, though voting rights advocates worry that will result in more barriers for eligible voters. Jude Joffe-Block, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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