The numbers came from a government agency, but they did not mean what memes claimed they meant.
By Alex Kasprak
In early September 2024, a series of images described as showing the number of non-citizen "illegal aliens" who had registered to vote, by state, in the 2024 U.S. presidential election went viral on X.
These posts asserted that the data came from the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA).
This claim was false. While these numbers do come from a table housed on the SSA website, they do not represent non-citizens registering to vote. Instead, they represent the number of times each state's election officials accessed a federal database known as the Help America Vote Verification (HAVV) system.
HAVV data come from the Social Security Administration and from participating state departments of motor vehicles, as described by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators:
[The "Help America Vote Act of 2002"] requires states and localities to develop centralized computerized voter databases to verify voter registration information. To register to vote, individuals must provide their driver's license number to the state election agency.
If the registrant has no driver's license they must supply the last four digits of their social security number (SSN). The statute requires the chief state election official and state motor vehicle agency (MVA) officials to enter into agreements to match voter registration information with MVA information.
The statute also mandates that MVA officials and the commissioner of social security reach agreements to verify the name, date of birth, last four SSN digits, and any information recorded in the Social Security Administration's records regarding the death of an individual.
The numbers displayed in viral posts on X match those for "the total number of verification requests received from each participating State through HAVV" from Jan. 1, 2024, to Aug. 24, 2024. (Archived with a weeks' more data added to the total here).
These requests are made, primarily, in instances in which "an applicant for voter registration does not have a driver's license," as described by the SSA:
When an applicant for voter registration does not have a driver's license, the state may request a 4-digit SSN verification from SSA through HAVV. The state must submit the applicant's name, date of birth, and last four digits of their SSN.
As the numbers in the meme merely show the number of times this system was accessed, it does not reveal anything about noncitizen voting. For that reason, we rate the claim as "False."
Snopes has debunked several false claims about noncitizen voting in the run-up to the 2024 general election and the misuse of motor-vehicle data to improperly infer illegal behavior.