Experts Doubt Census Claim 24,000 Noncitizens Voted

Trump touted the finding on social media and wrote that it supports his claim that he won in 2020. He said researchers are still analyzing another 32 million voters and predicted the count of illegal noncitizen votes would "explode" once that work is done.

Beth Jarosz, a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Massive Data Institute who has worked as a contractor on Census Bureau reports, said most bureau reports identify their authors and detail data reliability. "A properly done Census report would have had that information and the fact that it is missing is glaring and makes me think that they are hiding something," she said.

Terri Ann Lowenthal, staff director of the House subcommittee overseeing the Census Bureau from 1987 to 1994, called the report "beneath the Census Bureau's stellar reputation." The absence of any career staff names, she said, suggested the work may have been done by someone with a political agenda.

Justin Levitt, an election law specialist at Loyola Law School who worked on voting rights in the Biden White House, said a normal analysis would include a margin of error and that the 24,000 figure could fall inside one. "In most statistical exercises, it's not unthinkable that there might be 0.019% false positives — and if that were the case here, that would turn the total conclusions to zero," he said.

The Census Bureau did not respond to a request for comment. Asked whether the release supports the president's assertion, the White House responded with a link to a social media post by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.