New Americans Are Gearing Up to Protect Their Vote

FEATURING NICOLE MELAKU - The Trump administration earlier this year claimed it had discovered more than 250,000 noncitizen voters on the rolls of just four states. Government officials offered no evidence to support the wild claim, one that contradicts every report and investigation.

Voter fraud by noncitizens is extremely rare and is usually a result of error rather than malicious intent. In fact, there have been prominent cases of malicious voter fraud linked to white Republican operatives. 

Building on years of such baseless claims of fraud, advocacy groups worry about voter intimidation against people of color and those suspected of being noncitizens during this year’s midterm elections. To that end, the National Partnership for New Americans has just launched a new campaign to engage and activate eligible voters.

Nicole Melaku, Executive Director of National Partnership for New Americans. She has more than a decade of experience in immigrant and refugee advocacy at local, state, and national levels. She spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about what voters of color can expect and what they are doing to combat restrictions.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: Let's first begin by talking about these baseless claims. I mentioned those 250,000 voters. It seems as though the Trump administration is relying heavily on smoke and mirrors and just making up wild claims to justify what essentially, it sounds like it's planning a crackdown on voters' ability, particularly people who would perhaps not vote the way he'd like them to vote. 

Are you worried that this sort of narrative, this sort of propaganda, really, might make it more difficult, might muddy the waters, might create justifications for armed enforcement at the polls, et cetera? 

Nicole Melaku: Well, first, I think we should all be concerned when we see the signs and potential threats of voter suppression across communities. And in particular, we are concerned about immigrant voters being targeted for enforcement or intimidation at the polls this year, which is why we launched this campaign, Together We're America, Together We Vote, that really speaks of the opportunity for the new American electorate, that is naturalized voters, to participate in this year's midterms. 

There has been, and there continues to not be evidence of thousands of voters, hundreds of thousands of non-citizens voters in elections over the last 10 years. In fact, very few instances of this have occurred. And if they are, they have been remedied and acknowledged in places like New Jersey, where there were administrative errors or the like that had contributed to folks inadvertently voting in local elections. 

I would say, alongside the many things that have been threats in the public discourse about this year's elections are that we know that certainly the administration understands the power of the vote that's in question. And folks really seeing firsthand the outcome of the policies of this administration and understanding that America and Americans of every persuasion, including naturalized voters, will be coming to the polls this November with something different in mind. And so regardless of how individuals vote, it is our charge and our mission to make sure that we combine our efforts with voter protection efforts across the country to make sure that every person who is eligible to vote this year, especially naturalized citizens, are able to freely and fairly exercise their voice in this year's midterms.