Republicans whipping up baseless fears of immigrants voting to advance Trump's election conspiracies: report

Republican officeholders and candidates are baselessly claiming that undocumented immigrants are voting.

The false claims are impacting politics far away from the U.S.-Mexico border as part of Donald Trump's conspiratorial claims of election fraud, which is exceptionally rare, and whipping up hysteria that non-citizens are sneaking into the country and casting ballots, reported the New York Times.

“I don’t want them coming into red states and turning them blue,” said former hospital chief engineer Mark Checkeroski, of Macomb County, Michigan.

Trump himself is helping to fan the flames with excerpts from right-wing documentaries playing before his rally in Ohio, where GOP Senate candidates have aired ominous anti-immigrant ads, and the former president called for stricter voter ID laws and proof of citizenship at polling places to prevent "open borders and horrible elections."

“The last election was already stolen,” said Alicia Cline, a 40-year-old horticulturist from Columbus. “The establishment is, I think, using the people that are rushing over the borders in order to support themselves and get more votes for themselves.”

The New York Times report provides more evidence that Trump's unceasing and unfounded claims that the November 2020 presidential vote was "stolen" by Democrat Joe Biden have seeped into the political bloodstream.

Seventy-eight percent of the Republicans surveyed by CNN-SSRS said last year that they do not believe Biden legitimately won the presidency, a figure in line with the findings of other opinion polls.

"It's a new phenomenon in American elections," said Edward Foley, a constitutional law professor at The Ohio State University."

There have been fights over hanging chads -- like Bush vs Gore in 2000 -- and there have been recounts for as long as there have been elections in America," Foley said.

"But the 'Big Lie' is a new thing. It's disconnected from reality and it's kind of a social pathology."

With additional reporting via AFP