Experts Question Census Bureau Report Trump Cites on Noncitizen Voting

A highly unusual Census Bureau report that President Trump is using to revive claims of widespread illegal voting by noncitizens has ties to a Trump-aligned think tank, NPR has learned.

In a social media post Tuesday, Trump claimed the bureau's initial analysis of more than 128 million voter records "proves that over 24,000 Noncitizens voted illegally" in the 2020 presidential election, and said the final number will "explode" once the agency finishes checking 32 million more records.

The unauthored, seven-page report says it draws on a 2020 commercial voter file and federal administrative records. But data and election experts say its methodology and conclusions are questionable. The analysis was not conducted by career civil servants at the bureau, and the team included people affiliated with the America First Policy Institute, a think tank founded by Trump's first-administration officials, according to a Census Bureau employee NPR agreed not to name over fear of retaliation.

Spokespeople for the bureau, the America First Policy Institute and the White House did not respond to requests for comment. AFPI did, however, tout the analysis on social media Tuesday, saying transparency is "critical" to restoring election confidence.

David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, called the analysis "laughable," saying census data cannot reliably be matched to voter data. He noted that 24,000 out of 128 million votes is just shy of 0.02%.

Michael Morse, a University of Pennsylvania law professor, said the matching exercise is likely plagued by a lack of unique identifiers in voter records and outdated naturalization data, and that the report's lack of transparency makes its claims impossible to verify.

Former bureau economist Misty Heggeness said the absence of an author on the report departs from normal practice, raising doubts about whether standard rigor was applied. Amy O'Hara, former chief of the bureau's Center for Administrative Records Research and Applications, said the report lacks any measure of variance or bias, and pushed back on its claim that the bureau is "uniquely capable" of tracking election fraud, noting anomalies in data don't necessarily indicate fraud.

The report follows a wave of departures of statisticians and economists from the bureau amid Trump administration workforce cuts, and comes as the administration signals plans for major changes to the 2030 census. O'Hara warned that anything casting doubt on the bureau's neutrality could hurt public participation in that count.