J.d. Vance Claims 'illegal Immigrant Somalis' Conspired To 'flood The Polls' In Ohio

Vice President J.D. Vance has made it clear that he will happily spread rumors about the malicious misdeeds of unauthorized immigrants even when they have no basis in fact. Vance was at it again on Monday, when he told the crowd at a campaign stop in Swanton, Ohio, that he "saw a story" about "illegal immigrant Somalis who are coordinating to flood the polls and drown out your vote."

NewsGuard's Sam Howard could not find any such story. The closest thing he came across was an October 30 post on X by right-wing commentator Laura Loomer, who averred that Somali immigrants in Ohio were illegally politicking for Democrats while standing less than 100 feet from polling places. As an example, Loomer presented video of Abdirizak Ahmed, an immigrant rights activist, speaking outside an early voting location in Columbus, which is mostly located in Franklin County. But Antone White, who directs the Franklin County Board of Elections, told Howard that Ahmed was clearly standing outside the 100-foot "campaign line," which was "marked with a blue arc."

In any case, Loomer did not explicitly say anything about illegal voting by "immigrant Somalis," although she did say the targets of the politicking were "foreign born Somalis," adding, "who knows if these people are even here legally." Maybe that was good enough for Vance?

If so, he probably should have paused to consider the obstacles to executing the scheme he described. Ohio does not allow voting by noncitizens, even in local elections, and voters in that state are required to present a photo ID and "proof of citizenship." For the latter purpose, voters can offer a passport, a birth certificate, a certificate of naturalization or citizenship, or "a current Ohio driver license or state ID that doesn't indicate noncitizen status."

What response did Vance propose to the plot he imagined? "I happen to believe that we want American elections to belong to American citizens," he said in Swanton. "Send a message by voting for Vivek [Ramaswamy] for governor."

Now that Ramaswamy has lost that election to Democrat Amy Acton, the next step is predictable. Based on fantastical claims like Vance's, Republicans can argue that Ramaswamy and other rejected candidates on their team would have won but for illegal voting by noncitizens, even though the evidence indicates that such fraud is quite rare.

President Donald Trump, who has a long history of grossly exaggerating the extent of illegal voting, helped set the stage for such sore-loser complaints on July 16, when he asserted that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had "identified approximately 278,000 non-citizens who are registered to vote in federal elections." The next day, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced that his department had "identified over 250,000 potential non-citizens illegally registered to vote" in California, New Jersey, Nevada, and Pennsylvania.

Those tallies included "as many as" 15,903 "non-citizens registered to vote in Nevada." The following month, when the DHS submitted a list of allegedly illegal voters to Nevada election officials, the number had fallen to 185—99 percent lower than Mullin's original figure. It turned out that every one of those 185 voters was a U.S. citizen.

Something similar happened with the Trump administration's estimate for California. On July 17, it was "as many as" 190,832 "non-citizens registered to vote in California." But as of October 13, the Justice Department was asking California election officials to segregate about 20,000 ballots from "likely noncitizens."

That demand resulted in a series of rebukes from federal courts, which noted the questionable reliability of the DHS list, the danger that residents mistakenly identified as noncitizens would be denied the right to vote, the conflict between such a late intervention and the requirements of federal law, and the audacity of the Trump administration's attempt to usurp states' constitutional authority over elections. In addition to making those points, a federal judge in California noted the puzzle of exactly how the Trump administration had "reduced its initial claim of nearly 200,000 alleged noncitizens to 20,000 individuals"—a number that was nearly 90 percent smaller.

Last August in Pennsylvania, meanwhile, Secretary of State Al Schmidt, a Republican, said DHS officials admitted they did not have "high confidence" in their claim that "as many as" 14,576 noncitizens were registered to vote in his state. As of October 23, the department still had not shared a list of supposedly illegal voters with Pennsylvania officials.

On July 17, Mullin said "as many as" 35,152 noncitizens were registered to vote in New Jersey. Four days later, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill revealed that a "serious software error" had mistakenly registered 6,600 residents who identified themselves as noncitizens when they applied for driver's licenses or ID cards from the state's Motor Vehicle Commission. She later reported that 340 of those people had voted in an election.

When filtered through Trump's brain, that embarrassing problem became "thousands of votes in New Jersey where illegal aliens were allowed to vote." What about the original DHS claim? "We have asked them for any evidence of this, where they got that number, who this is," Sherrill said in July. "We've received nothing back yet." She added that Trump "knows that if he provides any credible information, we will of course investigate it."

There is a notable gap between the DHS claims and federal prosecutions for illegal voting. On October 19, the Justice Department announced charges against 28 California residents in connection with violations of 18 USC 611, which makes it a misdemeanor for "any alien to vote" in a federal election. As of October 23, the Justice Department had charged 20 noncitizens with illegally voting in Pennsylvania.

Those numbers are tiny, especially when you consider that California has 23.2 million registered voters and Pennsylvania has 8.6 million. If the DHS estimates were even close to the right ballpark, you would expect to see a lot more cases.

"If you vote illegally, we will find you," Immigration and Customs Enforcement warned on Election Day. "We will track you down, arrest you, and prosecute you. There will be no escape."

Despite that promise, the Trump administration has arrested remarkably few illegal voters. Since the beginning of Trump's current term, the Justice Department has charged "about 236 people with voting-fraud-related offenses across the country," and that tally "includes some noncitizens accused of registering to vote but not actually casting ballots," The New York Times reports. "The figure is a minuscule share of the more than 158 million ballots cast in the 2024 general election."

So far, the Trump administration has not offered any evidence that illegal voting by noncitizens is common enough to change the outcomes of elections. But that probably will not matter for anyone who believed Vance when he said "illegal immigrant Somalis" had the power to "flood the polls and drown out your vote."

If you believe that, you might also believe that "Haitian migrants" in Ohio have a nasty habit of snatching and eating their neighbors' pets—another unsubstantiated claim about nefarious foreigners that Vance (and Trump) promoted prior to the 2024 presidential election. "If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people," Vance explained, "then that's what I'm going to do."

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