The U.S. Social Safety Administration reported over 10 million undocumented immigrants had registered to vote within the November 2024 U.S. election as of September 2024.
In early September 2024, a collection of photographs described as displaying the variety of non-citizen “unlawful aliens” who had registered to vote, by state, within the 2024 U.S. presidential election went viral on X.
These posts asserted that the info got here from the U.S. Social Safety Administration (SSA).
This declare was false. Whereas these numbers do come from a table housed on the SSA web site, they don’t signify non-citizens registering to vote. As a substitute, they signify the variety of instances every state’s election officers accessed a federal database often called the Assist America Vote Verification (HAVV) system.
HAVV knowledge come from the Social Safety Administration and from taking part state departments of motor automobiles, as described by the American Affiliation of Motor Car Directors:
[The “Help America Vote Act of 2002”] requires states and localities to develop centralized computerized voter databases to confirm voter registration data. To register to vote, people should present their driver’s license quantity to the state election company.
If the registrant has no driver’s license they need to provide the final 4 digits of their social safety quantity (SSN). The statute requires the chief state election official and state motorcar company (MVA) officers to enter into agreements to match voter registration data with MVA data.
The statute additionally mandates that MVA officers and the commissioner of social safety attain agreements to confirm the identify, date of start, final 4 SSN digits, and any data recorded within the Social Safety Administration’s data concerning the loss of life of a person.
The numbers displayed in viral posts on X match these for “the whole variety of verification requests acquired from every taking part State by means of HAVV” from Jan. 1, 2024, to Aug. 24, 2024. (Archived with a weeks’ extra knowledge added to the whole here).
These requests are made, primarily, in situations wherein “an applicant for voter registration doesn’t have a driver’s license,” as described by the SSA:
When an applicant for voter registration doesn’t have a driver’s license, the state could request a 4-digit SSN verification from SSA by means of HAVV. The state should submit the applicant’s identify, date of start, and final 4 digits of their SSN.
Because the numbers within the meme merely present the variety of instances this method was accessed, it doesn’t reveal something about noncitizen voting. For that purpose, we charge the declare as “False.”
Snopes has debunked a number of false claims about noncitizen voting within the run-up to the 2024 basic election and the misuse of motor-vehicle knowledge to improperly infer unlawful conduct.
