Republicans Seize on False Theories About Immigrant Voting

In precocious July, a radical of Republican activists met connected a Zoom telephone to sermon preparations for the November election. The taxable was however to support undocumented immigrants from voting successful November, a occupation they claim, inaccurately, to beryllium a looming menace to a just election.

One woman, a section enactment seat from Georgia, recommended scouring schoolhouse enrollment figures to find neighborhoods with ample numbers of migrants. Another, Darlene Hennessy, an activistic from the Detroit area, recommended hanging up signs successful “ethnic” neighborhoods informing radical not to ballot if they were not eligible. She besides suggested searching elector rolls for definite types of surnames.

“I deliberation it’s unfortunate, but sometimes the lone mode you tin find retired is to look for taste names,” Ms. Hennessy said, according to a signaling of the telephone obtained by The New York Times.

“We don’t privation to beryllium doing thing illegal,” she added.

There is nary denotation that noncitizens are voting in ample numbers. And yet the conception that they volition flood the polls — and ballot overwhelmingly for Democrats — is animating a sprawling web of Republicans who mobilized astir erstwhile President Donald J. Trump’s mendacious claims of a rigged predetermination successful 2020 and are present preparing for the adjacent one.

Activists similar Ms. Hennessy, salient lawyers, Republican lawmakers, right-wing influencers and different allies of Mr. Trump person ramped up unit connected section predetermination officials to instrumentality steps that they accidental volition support noncitizens from tilting the predetermination successful Democrats’ favor. They person pressed for elector rotation purges, filed lawsuits, prepared for on-the-ground monitoring of polling places and dispersed misinformation online.

Republican elected officials person responded. In Texas, the state’s Republican lawyer general, Ken Paxton, precocious announced an investigation into whether organizations were purposely registering noncitizens to vote. (He besides authorized the authorities constabulary to hunt the homes of activists who had been registering Latino voters arsenic portion of an probe into allegations of elector fraud.) In Alabama, the caput of authorities precocious deactivated the registrations of much than 3,000 people, including immoderate who are naturalized citizens, according to quality reports, forcing them to update their records earlier they tin vote.