Census Bureau report linking noncitizen voting to 2020 election found to rely on flawed data

Last month the U.S. Census Bureau issued a short report asserting that analysis of more than 128 million 2020 voter records identified roughly 24,000 individuals flagged as noncitizens, a claim quickly embraced by President Donald Trump. A probe revealed that the study relied on a wide array of commercial and government datasets, but provided no clear explanation of how these were linked, raising doubts about its accuracy.

Several of the report's authors have recent affiliations with the Trump administration, the America First Policy Institute, and other Republican-aligned groups. Former Census officials and independent scholars argue that errors in the protected identification key matching process likely produced false positives rather than genuine instances of illegal voting. The bureau's disclosure review board approved the brief via an email vote, reviewing only summary tables and not the underlying analysis. Critics warn that publishing such a report under the Census name could damage confidence in the agency's data products.