Report: More Than 100,000 Non-Citizens Are Registered Voters in Pennsylvania

Voting Booths California
Eric Thayer/AFP/Getty

More than 100,000 non-U.S. citizens are registered voters in Pennsylvania, according to testimony contained in a lawsuit demanding that the state admit its problems when it comes to non-citizen voting.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation argued that non-citizens have been voting in Pennsylvania for decades, and that problem has been evident in other states the organization has worked with—including New Jersey and Virginia.

But the state has not granted PILF’s open records requests to access the data at the root of the problem, the organization said in the lawsuit filed in federal court in Harrisburg.

“For months, Pennsylvania bureaucrats have concealed facts about non-citizens registering and voting — that ends today,” PILF President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams said.

Adams said the state already admitted that it allowed non-citizens renewing their driver’s licenses to have the opportunity to register to vote.

Pennsylvania officials, however, declined to comment on the lawsuit or the more than 100,000 non-citizen voters.

“We’re not going to comment on anything related to litigation,” said Wanda Murren, director of communications and press at the Pennsylvania Department of State.

Of the more than 100,000 non-citizen voters in Pennsylvania, one city commissioner found in September that at least 90 of those non-citizens registered to vote cast ballots in Philadelphia. Hundreds more non-citizens who did not vote were also on the voter rolls.

The PILF also went after a county in Texas for failing to release non-citizen voting records back in December.

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