The U.S. Census Bureau is alleging that four hundred noncitizens voted in Georgia’s 2020 election.
But Georgia’s secretary of state is questioning those findings.
President Donald Trump praised the Census Bureau’s report, saying in a Truth Social post “I WON THE ELECTION.”
Trump lost Georgia in 2020 by more than 11,000 votes. The results of that election stood after multiple recounts and lawsuits.
Raffensperger responded to the report in a Wednesday letter shared with Georgia Public Broadcasting, pointing to a 2024 audit which found 20 noncitizens had registered to vote out of more than 8 million people.
“I thank you for your agency’s efforts in addressing this fundamental issue of election security and fully support your desire to reassure the public that American elections are only decided by American citizens,” Raffensperger wrote. “To further that mutual goal, I am asking for all the identifying information utilized by your agency to detect the alleged 400 non-citizens who would have voted in Georgia in 2020.”
The Census Bureau’s report is the latest effort by the Trump administration to relitigate the results of the 2020 election in the state of Georgia.
Earlier this year, the Department of Justice executed a raid on an elections warehouse in Fulton County, seizing ballots from the 2020 election that had been preserved for use in other litigation.
The DOJ then secured a subpoena for names and contact information for every election worker in the 2020 election.
U.S. District Judge William Ray tossed the subpoena, calling the effort “overly broad” and “unreasonable.”
David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, calls the Census Bureau’s methodology “shoddy and opaque.”
Becker is a former senior trial attorney in the Voting Section of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.
He notes the number the Census Bureau offers is smaller than the administration has previously stated, and even if this latest report were true, the results would not have changed the outcome of the election.
“Census data cannot be reliably matched to public voter data, as it lacks any unique matching identifiers to compare those public voter records,” Becker wrote. “Any possible effort to ‘match’ such data would result in large numbers of false matches.”
A spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office said, “The Secretary and his team are committed to delivering a free, fair and fast election in 2026.”
This story comes to The Current GA through a reporting partnership with GPB News, a non-profit newsroom covering the state of Georgia.