True the Vote, the right-wing conspiracy theorist group that spread lies of ballot stuffing in the 2020 election is focused on perpetuating a new lie ahead of 2024: the myth of non-citizens voting in elections.
The group, which last year admitted before a Fulton County Judge that they had no evidence of any kind to support their baseless ballot stuffing claims that were used in the widely-debunked Dinesh D’souza film “2000 mules,” released a 44-page “advocate handbook.” In it, the group warns against the supposed threat of non-citizens casting ballots in the 2024 election and trains followers on how to combat the issue, which rarely happens in U.S. elections.
But, the handbook — and the larger initiative, which the group calls “The 611 Project,” named after federal law 18 USC 611, which expressly outlaws non-citizen voting in federal elections and outlines criminal penalties for those who do so — is riddled with errors, deliberate omissions of facts, and most glaringly and unsurprisingly, zero evidence to suggest claims that there was or will be non-citizens voting en masse in the upcoming election. True the Vote did not respond to TPM’s requests for comment.
This new “handbook” from the MAGA group is just one layer of election deniers’ and conspiracy theorists’ revived fixation on non-citizen voting heading into the 2024 election, as Donald Trump and his supporters set themselves up to challenge the election if Trump loses. Last month, House Speaker Mike Johnson and former President Donald Trump promoted a new “election integrity” effort by holding a big press briefing at Mar-a-Lago to announce legislation that would stop non citizens from voting — which is already illegal under federal law.
David Becker, the executive director and founder of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, told TPM that True the Vote’s recent efforts are merely a way to cast doubt on the integrity of another election.
“It’s an attempt to create a false narrative about the security and integrity of an election again, that they think they’re going to lose,” he said.
It’s also a provably false narrative. Non-citizens have been prevented from voting in federal elections for a long time, and those laws have been augmented by the 2002 Help America Vote Act, passed in response to the 2000 election, which requires all new registrants to provide identification at the polls.
“Our voter lists are more accurate, more secure, more reflective of the eligible voting population than they have ever been in American history,” Becker said.
True the Vote is not the only group promoting this false narrative and fear mongering about non-citizen voting in 2024 as Trump and his supporters look for ways to keep election denialism as well as immigration and their manufactured crisis at the southern border front and center this campaign season. Last month, the far right Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, which maintains that sheriffs hold supreme law enforcement authority in the country,