Experts criticize unusual Census Bureau report that claims tens of thousands of noncitizens voted in 2020

The useful part

Experts slam Trump's unusual new census report as a 'hijack by the White House'. KIFI Home News Idaho Falls News Rexburg News Pocatello News Idaho Wyoming Utah Crime Tracker US/World Community All-Stars Scam Alerts Pocatello Police Shooting Vallow-Daybell Coverage Teton Dam: President Donald Trump touted the results Tuesday on Truth Social, saying the bureau had proved that more than 24,000 noncitizens illegally voted in 2020 after analyzing 128 million individual voter records.

How it works

• He predicted the number would "explode" once analysts processed the remaining 32 million voter records.
• Analysts used the Census Bureau's system for linking the records, searching for individual voters who match noncitizen records in the federal government databases.
• "There's every reason to believe that the quality of the data that's being used is highly suspect, because it was not business as usual when those data were being developed," Santos told CNN.
• Last month, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said he was working with Lutnick to use federal funding as leverage to pressure states to adopt Trump-backed election reforms.
• The administration has increasingly tapped federal databases to bolster its search for noncitizen voting.

What to take from it

Record-linking systems can produce false matches, even when they are well designed, he said. Those problems may have been worse during the Covid-19 pandemic, when election offices faced shutdowns, staffing shortages and other disruptions. Experts questioned whether the analysis of that data contained enough specific information about individual voters to guard against false-positive results.

Example or evidence

• "This alleged analysis based on Census data fails the laugh test," said David Becker, a former Justice Department lawyer who now oversees the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research.
• The findings fall well below Biden's victory margins in the most closely contested states:
• The disputed findings come amid growing concern about political pressure on the Census Bureau, which has traditionally been led by career statisticians and operated independently of the White House.
• The Census Bureau, Commerce Department and White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Details worth keeping

Joe Biden won the national popular vote by more than 7 million votes. AFPI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The administration has intensified its effort to find evidence backing Trump's longstanding claims of widespread voter fraud.

Related coverage

• Npr: A Trump-aligned think tank has ties to a highly unusual Census Bureau report that the president is using to renew false claims of widespread voting by non-U.S. citizens in 2020, NPR has learned.
• Npr: A Trump-aligned think tank has ties to a highly unusual Census Bureau report that the president is using to renew false claims of widespread voting by non-U.S. citizens in 2020, NPR has learned.
• Cis: If the Census Bureau is going to issue "data products" like this one, it should be clearer in explaining how it arrived at its conclusions — and not use legally meaningless words like "noncitizen".
• Npr: The Trump administration claimed to have found 250,000 noncitizens on the voter rolls in four states. But the agency's communications with states since then indicate that data was preliminary.
• Realclearpolitics: Census is carried out to benefit the American people.