Are 2 million non-citizen Hispanics illegally registered to vote in the United States?

Question

A large number of non-citizen Hispanics, as many as 2 million, were illegally registered to vote in the U.S., according to a nationwide poll.

The National Hispanic Survey provides additional evidence for use by anti-voter fraud conservatives and bolsters an analysis by professors at Old Dominion University who say non-citizens registered and voted in potentially large numbers.

- The Washington Times

Is there evidence that "as many as 2 million non-citizen Hispanics" are registered to vote? Is this polling data reliable, statistically significant, and peer reviewed?

Can't speak to the claim in general, but as to the "National Hispanic Survey" supposedly supporting the claim: extrapolating from 58 individuals to millions is not encouraging. Also see this answer on response error and the dangers of extrapolation. — ff524, Feb 20 '17 at 07:58
The question is focuses on only one aspect, "have there been illegal votes, and how many". Any complete discussion of the subject should also ask, "have legal votes been suppressed, and how many". — DevSolar, Feb 20 '17 at 09:20
@DevSolar: Giving a complete discussion of the subject is not our goal. — Oddthinking, Feb 20 '17 at 13:12
@ff524 You're mixing up registering to vote with actually voting. Here is an official statement from Michigan: "Michigan Department of State staff verified that almost 1,000 people who are noncitizens are registered to vote, despite only having access to about 19 percent of complete citizenship data" http://www.michigan.gov/sos/0,4670,7-127--286465--,00.html — DavePhD, Feb 20 '17 at 13:43
@DavePhD - That would be a stupid way to try to illegally vote, I'd have to say. Especially since they are registered, supposedly, knowing if they ever voted would be very easy to trace, and, yet, somehow, I hear a lot about how many possible illegal registrations are out there, but never about any of them actually casting a vote. Hmmm....... — PoloHoleSet, Feb 20 '17 at 14:32
@DavePhD I'm not mixing it up. I'm referring to the part of the article where it says that according to the National Hispanic Survey, "448, said they were non-citizens, and of those, 13 percent said they were registered to vote." That's 58 respondents. I linked to the other answer to show why it's dangerous to extrapolate from such a small sample size. — ff524, Feb 20 '17 at 15:08
@ff524 Note that that is the claim of the Washington Times, but not what the poll says. The poll says that 13% of registered voters in their sample are non-citizens. 800 people were asked, 470 of those were registered. 13% of those are 61 (still a rather small sample size). — tim, Feb 20 '17 at 15:14
Never is an exaggeration. Note that she first voted in 2004 and wasn't caught for over a decade. But all this is rather off-topic on this question, which is purely about registrations. — Brythan, Feb 20 '17 at 15:49
How about we just wait and see what the official investigation turns up? (Radical idea, I know, sorry....) — Wildcard, Feb 20 '17 at 23:26

score 44 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 20 '17 at 19:14

44

The Poll

The poll doesn't try to make any claim about illegal votes or illegal registration. The voter profile does contain a page which says that 13% of registered voters in the poll were non-citizens (p68).

It does not state the status of these non-citizens, and it does not say where they were registered, or if they actually voted.

As the Washington Times notes, it may be assumed that these are visa holders, permanent residents, or possibly undocumented immigrants.

Permanent residents are allowed to vote in local and some state elections, so it makes sense for them to be registered.

The Washington Times Article

As noted, the poll makes no claim about illegal voter registration, and it is very well possible if not likely that all of those registered are registered legally.

According to the Washington Times, the 2 million claim comes from James Agresti who is the president of a right-wing think tank:

James Agresti, who directs the research nonprofit “Just Facts,” applied the 13 percent figure to 2013 U.S. Census numbers for non-citizen Hispanic adults. In 2013, the Census reported that 11.8 million non-citizen Hispanic adults lived here, which would amount to 1.5 million illegally registered Latinos.
Accounting for the margin of error based on the sample size of non-citizens, Mr. Agresti calculated that the number of illegally registered Hispanics could range from 1.0 million to 2.1 million.

As noted in this related question, extrapolating from such a small sample to such a large sample is error-prone and not generally done (even when starting with a correct small sample, which doesn't seem to be the case here). According to the calculations by Agresti, he extrapolates from 58 people who Agresti thinks are illegally registered (the actual amount of people who are non-citizens and registered to vote - maybe legally, maybe illegally, the poll doesn't say this - is 61).

Note also that even then, you only arrive at 2 million if you take the upper bound of the margin of error that Agresti assumes. It also seems that Agresti may have misread the poll or miscalculated. "13% of registered voters are non-citizen" (from the poll) does not mean that "13% of non-citizens are registered voters". (which seems to be what Agrestis calculations are based on)

edited Feb 20 '17 at 19:14

James G.

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answered Feb 20 '17 at 10:11

tim

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For people following along at home: Page 68 of the presentation, on the right hand side, has the figure 13% of the people answering "Yes" to registered to vote, answering "No" to whether they are citizens. – Oddthinking Feb 20 '17 at 13:18
also the term undocumented immigrants by a simple definition is illegal immigrants. Since we do not know who, where, or when they immigrated to the country, they therefore are illegal. – GoldBishop Feb 20 '17 at 14:54
Also, i do appreciate the way you clarified at the end, the way the words were organized. Seems the semantics of the statement, are at question more than the statistics. – GoldBishop Feb 20 '17 at 14:56
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@GoldBishop illegal vs undocumented is indeed semantics, but I would say that the statistics are very much in question. The original poll makes no attempt to look into illegal voting (registration), and the calculations made by Agresti are misleading at best, but probably just wrong. – tim Feb 20 '17 at 15:07
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Per the WT article (I haven't looked at the original poll): "448, said they were non-citizens, and of those, 13 percent said they were registered to vote." That's 58 respondents. Is that right? They extrapolate out to millions, from 58 individual responses? – ff524 Feb 20 '17 at 15:10
@tim I do not disagree....When someone starts throwing up extreme percentages for validation, I ask for the raw data. – GoldBishop Feb 20 '17 at 15:10
@ff524 yeah 500 out of 200M citizens, that is roughly .00025% of the population. I wonder what their margin of error or threshold is? 70%? – GoldBishop Feb 20 '17 at 15:12
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@ff524 actually, no. See my comment above, the Times misread the poll. It's actually 61 respondents. – tim Feb 20 '17 at 15:15
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For extrapolating out to millions, 61 is still tiny! Especially in a population that is likely to have a high rate of response error. Might want to mention that number in the answer!. – ff524 Feb 20 '17 at 15:17
Not quite sure how to read those stats. Can someone explain the numbers for citizen/non-citizen on p.67 (middle column, all the way at the bottom)? Why are the numbers not matching? Is it because not every question was answered by all participants or what? – ventsyv Feb 20 '17 at 16:45
@tim Agresti's calculation appear correct to me. Pew Research reports 11.2 million Latino voters in 2012, 13% (+/- 4.5%) puts you in the 1 to 2 million range. – ventsyv Feb 20 '17 at 16:59
@ventsyv Right, but: 1) You can't apply the original margin of error to your own calculations, and 2) The 13% is wrong. 13% is not the amount of non-citizens that are registered. But that is what it needs to be for the calculation to make sense (right?). – tim Feb 20 '17 at 17:29
@ventsyv The table is a bit confusing. The way you need to read it is to look at the column first. Eg 86% of registered voters were citizens, 13% were non-citizens (adds up to ~100). Of non-registered voters, 10 were citizens, 90% were non-citizens (adds up to 100). If you - as Agresti seems to have done - look at the rows, you would read it as 13% of non-citizens are registered. This is as far as I can tell false, and doesn't add up (this is even more obvious in other rows, eg "landline", were you would get 142 when adding, which is obviously wrong). – tim Feb 20 '17 at 17:30
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@tim Relevant to point out that the poll is commissioned by a major party donor? (See http://mclaughlinonline.com/2013/06/21/opiniones-latinas-national-survey-of-hispanic-adults-finds-strong-support-for-immigration-reform/) – Joe Feb 20 '17 at 20:16
On the first page of the poll, it says it is a "poll of 800 Hispanic adults" and "Within the sample, 470 of the Hispanic adults are also registered voters". If 13% of the 470 are non-citizens, that gives us 61 people. The total non-citizen number is 448 (56% of 800) which gives 13.6% of the non-citizens in this poll being registered. I'm not agreeing with the conclusion overall just pointing out the numbers that are actually in the poll. – JimmyJames Feb 20 '17 at 20:56
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Wait... by that same logic, 118% of citizens are registered. The total column must not mean what I think it means. – JimmyJames Feb 20 '17 at 21:23
@Joe Non-citizens are not relevant to the figure I am referring to here. – JimmyJames Feb 20 '17 at 22:15
The link you cite says "No state has extended noncitizen voting to statewide elections." Maybe remove the "and some state elections"? Unless you have another source that supports that statement. – ff524 Feb 21 '17 at 05:42
@tim I thought 13% (+/- 4.5%) is the number of people who are registered to vote but not citizens according to the poll? Multiply that by ~11 million registered Hispanic voters, and you are in the ballpark. Am I missing something? – ventsyv Feb 21 '17 at 16:33
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@ventsyv the 13% are the amount of non-citizens among registered voters, not the amount of registered voters among non-citizens. Note that Agresti doesn't multiply this by the amount of registered Hispanic voters (which would indeed be right - although still problematic), but by the amount of non-citizen Hispanics living here. – tim Feb 21 '17 at 17:14
@tim Exactly. Agresti got lucky that the number of illegal immigrants is about the same as the number of registered Latino voters. Still deeply flawed analysis but maybe worth pointing out that by chance his numbers work out. – ventsyv Feb 21 '17 at 18:02
@ventsyv I'm not even sure if that is true. I couldn't find a reliable source for the number of registered Hispanics. I found sources saying that 11 million Latinos voted in 2012, but that's really not the same. Either way, I don't think it matters that much, as the entire approach is deeply flawed. – tim Feb 21 '17 at 18:20
@tim I agree, just leave it as is. – ventsyv Feb 21 '17 at 18:29
Noncitizens can vote only in a small number of jurisdictions in a couple of states. Your answer implies that they can vote in all local elections. – phoog Feb 25 '17 at 16:27

Oddthinking · Answer 2 · 2017-02-25T18:07:16.610

No, the analysis that lead to this figure was in error.

Albert Cairo has written a detailed debunking of the analysis that lead to the claim.

One of the most important errors was that

they didn't ask all the 800 [respondents] about their citizenship. They only asked those people who said that they were born outside of the United States.

Cairo wrote to the original claimant, James D. Agresti, about this error, and Agresti agreed it was an error.

He replied very graciously, acknowledged the mistake, and proposed this correction with a larger margin of error:

For 2013, the year of the survey, the Census Bureau reports that 11,779,000 Hispanic non-citizens aged 18 and older resided in the United States. At a 13% registration rate, this is 1,531,270 Hispanic non-citizens registered to vote. Accounting for the sampling margin of error, there were about 264 non-citizens in this survey. In a population of 11.8 million, the margin of error for a sample of 264 is 6.0% with 95% confidence. Applied to the results of the survey, this is 824,530 to 2,238,010 Hispanic non-citizens registered to vote (with 95% confidence).

Cairo continued, arguing that even this correction was in error, mathematically, and more importantly that the survey data was being misused to extrapolate this figure.

I think that all these figures and computations are way too uncertain to say anything that isn't absurd. Based solely on the survey data, we cannot suggest that we have an illegal voter problem in the U.S. —or that we don't. The data from the survey is useless for this purpose, and it certainly doesn't support a headline saying that 2 million people are illegally registered to vote. Besides the problems with casually extrapolating from a sample, the survey wasn't designed to analyze voter fraud anyway.

I would have thought that in any survey, there will be some number of mistakes being made. No matter how unlikely an answer is to be correct statistically, some people will pick it. — gnasher729, Feb 25 '17 at 21:30
@gnasher729: Indeed. Cairo explains that if you want to answer this question, you need to design a survey (both questions and sampling) carefully to avoid (or detect) these types of sources of error. He argued that using survey data designed for a different purpose is inappropriate. — Oddthinking, Feb 26 '17 at 04:27

Are 2 million non-citizen Hispanics illegally registered to vote in the United States?

2 Answers2