USA Today spoke to University of St. Thomas law professor Virgil Wiebe when it fact checked and debunked a social media poster’s claim about Gov. Tim Walz and President Joe Biden. The media outlet said Wiebe proves it is false to say that the officials are letting undocumented noncitizens vote in Minnesota elections.
From the article “Walz, Biden actions don't allow noncitizens to vote | Fact check”:
Virgil Wiebe, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, has researched voting by noncitizens in the state and found it to be exceedingly rare as well. He told USA TODAY that immigrant rights advocates actually wanted to make sure there were safeguards to keep noncitizens from registering to vote in Minnesota when the two laws went into effect "because the immigration and criminal consequences of illegal voting are serious." He said most cases of noncitizens registering to vote were accidental and often a result of confusion over eligibility.
Wiebe produced a report earlier this year showing noncitizen voting and registration is exceedingly rare. His analysis of legal databases, press accounts, thinktank reports and other sources found a total of three state convictions – and no federal convictions – for voting when not a citizen over a period of time when 13.4 million votes were cast in Minnesota, from 2015 to 2024. The paper also pointed to an August 2017 state audit of Minnesota's voter registration database that led to 31 registrations being challenged on citizenship grounds out of more than 5.4 million registrations in the system.
