In JD Vance’s Backyard, Conspiracy Theories About Migrants and Voting Abound

Paul C. Pauley views himself as a middle-of-the-road Republican — who also just happens to believe in one of the most pernicious far-right conspiracy theories about illegal border crossings: that Democrats are bringing undocumented immigrants into the country to vote for their party.

“I don’t think they’re going to get that vote this year,” said Mr. Pauley, who sells evergreens on a family farm near Warren, Ohio. “But four years from now? Eight years from now?”

Former President Donald J. Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, are pushing the idea to mobilize supporters based on fear of what they call a foreign “invasion.” But demographers and population studies experts say that there is no evidence for the claim. It also strains even the imagination, envisioning Democrats in Washington circumventing border rules, officials and infrastructure to allow undocumented immigrants into the country, help them settle and then cast ballots, legally or not.

Election, court and law enforcement officials who have monitored reports of voter fraud have found no proof of widespread fraud, and they have said that the number of noncitizens who have wrongfully cast ballots is minuscule. It is a crime for noncitizens to attempt to vote in federal elections.

More than a dozen cities and towns, mostly in deep-blue areas, allow foreign nationals to vote in local elections regardless of their immigration status, which state and local leaders say is warranted because unauthorized immigrants pay taxes at levels comparable to those of citizens and strengthen their economies. Many immigrants wait for years to become naturalized and do not register to vote or cast ballots once they do.

That hasn’t stopped Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance from emphasizing the claim in media appearances and campaign events, fueling a conspiracy theory that is central to Mr. Trump’s lie that the last election was stolen from him. They use it to pummel the Biden administration’s border policies and cast Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, as a failed “border czar,” misconstruing the role she played.

Mr. Vance has made the conspiracy claim a staple of his stump speech, and in interviews has gone so far as to suggest that Democrats believe they can altogether “replace” native-born Americans, language that has been used by perpetrators of several mass shootings. At recent rallies in Arizona and Nevada, he said Ms. Harris would give every undocumented immigrant the right to vote and “destroy” Americans’ say in their own country. “When she let in millions of illegal aliens, it made our communities less safe — but it did give the Democrats a lot of voters,” he said Wednesday in Byron Center, Mich.

Asked to provide evidence of Mr. Trump’s claim that Democrats are bringing in migrants to vote, Karoline Leavitt, the campaign’s national press secretary, cited efforts at the local level allowing noncitizen voting and added, “Democrats aren’t even trying to hide their election interference schemes.”

Mr. Vance’s campaign declined to comment. He has rejected criticism of his remarks, saying that he has nothing against immigrants. “Obviously, I’m married to the daughter of immigrants,” he said last month on a radio program, referring to his wife, Usha Vance, whose parents are from India.

A road trip through Mr. Vance’s backyard in a stretch of northern Ohio offers a glimpse into how their claims about immigrant voting, long amplified by the right-wing media and Trump allies, have taken hold with a swath of voters. Even as Republicans have sought to downplay some of the most extreme voices propagating 2020 election denialism, distrust in the election system has festered.

The claim that Democrats are helping migrants enter the country illegally in hopes that they will vote for the party found wide support in interviews with dozens of voters across Ohio, one of several states that have purged hundreds, if not thousands, of people from voter rolls and passed laws prohibiting undocumented immigrants from voting. From a once-booming steel producing region in the northeastern part of the state to urban areas where the Latino population has boomed in recent years, the theory found purchase among not only Mr. Trump’s ardent supporters, but also right-leaning independents.

Watching a Mahoning Valley Scrappers baseball game with her husband in Niles, Barb Glass, 55, an independent, said the growing numbers of migrants in cities had made her suspect a government plot.

“Why wouldn’t they do that?” Ms. Glass said of Democrats. “Anything to further their agenda, which is to get into office and stay there.”

And in Medina, near Cleveland, Phil Syverson and his wife, Leona, both Republicans, said they believed Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance on the subject.

“For me, Democrats are crooked, and they’re stooping to all sorts of ways to try to stay in office,” Mr. Syverson said as the couple strolled through the county fair. “It’s obvious.”

Mr. Pauley, in Warren, said he would not go as far as Mr. Vance in believing that Democrats wanted to “replace” native-born Americans. But he was sure the Biden administration was not vetting migrants admitted into the country and that the authorities were overlooking illegal border crossings.

“There has got to be a reason they are letting so many people in,” he said.

Mr. Trump raised the specter of undocumented immigrants casting ballots during his 2016 campaign, when national polls showed him behind. Even after he won, he blamed his loss of the popular vote on millions of unauthorized immigrants, asserting without evidence that they had voted for Hillary Clinton. A White House commission that he appointed to investigate the claim did not find evidence to support it.

But, as a Times investigation found in 2020, commission members and Trump allies continued to promote the voter fraud idea in an attempt to disenfranchise voters ahead of that year’s election.

By the 2022 midterms, a number of candidates were perpetuating the claim. Among them was Mr. Vance, who jolted his Senate campaign in Ohio with Mr. Trump’s endorsement and a TV ad that drew national backlash for featuring the conspiracy. “Are you a racist? Do you hate Mexicans?” Mr. Vance says in the ad, tongue in cheek, before falsely accusing the news media of censoring conservatives who supported Mr. Trump’s immigration policies. “Joe Biden’s open border is killing Ohioans with more illegal drugs and more Democrat voters pouring into this country.”

As the number of migrants crossing the border illegally skyrocketed in the early years of the Biden administration, the conspiracy theory mixed with other falsehoods and exaggerations about migrants entering through “open borders” and receiving free health care, money and luxury accommodations.

Most of the Republican and right-leaning independent voters in Ohio who supported the claim about migrants and voting in interviews said their concerns had arisen only during the Biden administration. Many said they had heard the claims discussed on right-wing media outlets.

A few voters — largely older than 60, white Ohioans — expressed concern over the changing face of their communities, saying they believed Democrats were trying to alter the country’s demographics to their advantage.

Demographic and cultural changes in Ohio over the past decade have made conditions ripe for the conspiracy theory’s spread.

In the northeastern Mahoning Valley, where steel production once boomed, resentment toward foreigners started building years ago as manufacturers closed plants and shipped jobs overseas. The sentiment was exacerbated by a national opioid crisis that devastated the area and was falsely blamed on immigrants, helping push swing counties that had backed former President Barack Obama toward Mr. Trump. Elsewhere, around Toledo and Cleveland, Latino population increases over the past decade led to shifts that Mr. Trump and right-wing commentators had stoked fear about for years.

But outside the echo chamber of conservative and right-leaning Ohioans, the claims about immigrants pose a risk for Republicans. Some voters, particularly younger ones, said that immigration wasn’t a top concern of theirs and that the conspiracy theory rang false. Mr. Vance’s suggestion that Democrats want to “replace” native-born Americans with immigrants rankled some in a region where many still trace their roots to Irish, Italian and German ancestors.

Perched on a tow truck at a demolition derby in Medina County, Chris Schuler, 29, a pipe fitter and a Republican who plans to vote for Mr. Trump because of his economic policies, said he knew states had policies in place to prevent fraud and noncitizens from casting ballots. But he said he could see why conspiracy theories were spreading.

“I think the way that the last election went left a really bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths, and then made it to where people don’t really trust the voting system anymore,” he said. “So when they bring out accusations like that, it’s very easy to get a mass of people to be like: ‘You know what? Wait a second, that might make sense.’”

Glenn Wynn, an independent who attended the rally in Butler, Pa., where a gunman tried to assassinate Mr. Trump last month, said that what he called “Muslim-run” areas in Minnesota were proof that Democrats were using immigration to gain an unfair edge in elections. “I do think that they just want a new 10 million people into America now.”

When told of studies that showed it is extremely rare for undocumented immigrants to vote in federal elections, Mr. Wynn breathed a sigh of relief.

“That’s good news,” he said. “I am not a conspiracy theorist.”

Chris Cameron contributed reporting.