The Trump administration has steered resources from multiple federal agencies to pursue electoral fraud prosecutions, but faces mounting obstacles as courts reject its attempts to access voter data and investigations yield minimal results, according to recent reporting on the administration’s enforcement efforts.
The Justice Department has lost all nine cases it has brought so far to force states to turn over unredacted voter registration lists, with zero victories across 31 lawsuits filed against states and Washington, D.C. A federal judge in Maryland dealt the DOJ its ninth defeat on June 22, 2026, ruling that states have no obligation to provide the sensitive voter data the department is seeking. Notably, five of those nine losses came from judges appointed by President Trump himself, according to democracy law experts tracking the litigation.
The Maryland judge wrote that the court “joins every court to have addressed this issue in concluding that [a state voter file] is not a record or paper that a state must produce to the United States,” as reported by Democracy Docket. With 21 trial courts still to rule and the DOJ appealing its losses, the litigation is expected to continue through the midterm elections.
Noncitizen Voter Fraud Investigations Produce Minimal Results
Despite the courtroom setbacks, the administration has pressed forward with investigations into noncitizen voting. The Justice Department is pushing prosecutors to prioritize 90 open investigations into potential noncitizens voting, according to reporting from the New York Times in June 2026.
However, the scale of potential cases remains tiny. Federal immigration authorities have run more than 60 million voter records through a revamped federal database designed to identify noncitizens, which represents about a third of all registered voters in the United States. Of those, the Department of Homeland Security flagged approximately 24,000—or 0.04 percent—as potential noncitizens, all of which have been referred to immigration investigators for further investigation, according to Votebeat’s reporting.
Election officials have already found that at least some of those flagged voters are actually citizens. Experts across the political spectrum agree that noncitizens may accidentally register to vote without understanding the law, which does not necessarily indicate intentional fraud. The Department of Homeland Security has not disclosed how many of the flagged cases represent actual instances of noncitizen voting.
Election officials and researchers emphasize that noncitizen voting is extremely rare. A former election official quoted in PBS reporting stated that “voter fraud is exceedingly rare. The number of instances is not zero, but it’s also not in the triple digits.” Lorraine Minnite, a Rutgers University political science professor and author of a book on voter fraud, told Votebeat that the Trump administration investigations appear designed to create “maximum chaos and intimidation” across the country, describing the effort as “such overkill that you have to believe that they are trying to create a spectacle to intimidate people and go on a fishing expedition using bad data.”
Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School who worked on voting rights in the Biden White House, characterized the administration’s search as an unproductive hunt for a “boogeyman” to cast doubt on American elections. “The notion that noncitizens are voting in elections in sufficient quantities to swing those elections, particularly in statewide contests, is a fiction,” he said, according to Votebeat.
The DOJ’s courtroom losses and the minimal results from noncitizen investigations underscore the gap between the administration’s assertions of widespread electoral fraud and the evidence it has been able to produce in court or through its enforcement actions. With the 2026 midterm elections approaching, the administration continues to pursue electoral fraud prosecutions, but courts and data alike have offered little support for claims of systemic voting crimes.
Sources
- NBC News — The Trump administration’s struggle to demonstrate evidence of widespread voter fraud as it pursues prosecutions and investigations.
- Democracy Docket — The DOJ’s 0-9 record in voter file access cases, including losses before Trump-appointed judges, and analysis of the broader litigation strategy.
- Votebeat — Federal immigration investigators’ focus on noncitizen voter fraud, the scale of cases flagged (24,000 of 60+ million records), expert analysis that noncitizen voting is rare, and commentary from election law scholars.
- The New York Times — The DOJ’s directive to prosecutors to prioritize 90 open investigations into potential noncitizen voting.
- PBS NewsHour — Former election official’s assessment that voter fraud is exceedingly rare.
