A Republican National Committee official was recorded telling volunteer poll watchers that Donald Trump's claims about widespread voting by undocumented migrants were not accurate.
ProPublica obtained a recording of a Oct. 29 training session for poll watchers in Pennsylvania where RNC election-integrity specialist Joe Neild assured the volunteers that safeguards in the electoral system made noncitizen voting nearly impossible after one of them voiced concerns about the issue.
“I have two questions," one of the volunteers says in the recording. "The first one is: How do you know if they are illegal aliens or not, like, when they’re voting, as far as what you were explaining with the ID? And if they’re from another country it was OK as long as they had an ID. How do you know if they’re illegal aliens? How can you stop that?”
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"Well, if they’re illegal aliens, they’re not going to be inside the poll book," Neild replies. "Because if they’re illegal aliens, they’re not going to be able to register to vote, because they’ll need a driver’s license number or a Social Security number, and since the recent litigation in the years past, you do have — to be able to get a driver’s license here in Pennsylvania, you have to show proof of citizenship. So that is one way that they will not be able to get a driver’s license, and then you have to be — since they’re illegal, they’re not going to be able to get a Social Security number either.”
Neild did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that Democrats were “pushing for non-citizens to vote and influence the future of our country."
"President Trump and the RNC will continue the fight to secure tomorrow’s election so that every American vote is protected," Leavitt added.
The former president and his allies have repeatedly claimed that Democrats are trying to let illegal immigrants into the country to vote, but election law experts agree with Neild – although they wish he would go on the record with his fact check.
“It is good to see the RNC official recognizing the truth, in contrast to the many lies about noncitizen voting coming from Trump and his allies,” said Rick Hasen, a professor and election-law expert at the UCLA School of Law. “It would be even better for the officials to say it publicly.”