As the 2024 election draws near, a false narrative spreading on conservative websites is stoking fear that people in the country illegally are attempting to vote in Alabama and nationwide.

U.S. Rep. Dale Strong filed legislation on Friday to criminalize any noncitizen who might try to vote, making the offense a felony. Strong referenced a Guatemalan woman in the U.S. illegally who pleaded guilty in September to using fake documentation to vote in at least four elections in Alabama.

“Anyone who is not an American citizen and casts a ballot in this election should be first in line to be deported. We must secure our elections,” he said on X.

His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Despite the growing number of claims from conservative media and public officials, there is little evidence that elections in Alabama, or elsewhere, are under any widespread threat from noncitizens attempting to vote.

A 1996 federal law makes it illegal for noncitizens to vote in elections for president or members of Congress. Violators can be fined and imprisoned for up to a year. They can also be deported.

Noncitizens are not allowed to vote in Alabama, Laney Rawls, a spokesperson for the Alabama Secretary of State’s Office told AL.com on Friday.

Under state law, Alabama immigrants with legal status who obtain driver’s licenses have “FN” for “Foreign National” clearly printed on their ID. Alabama election workers will check for drivers’ licenses to make sure voters are eligible as citizens.

“If anybody presented a driver’s license with an ‘FN,’ which meant foreign national, that would not allow them as identification to vote,” said Sandy Smith, Registrar for Limestone County.

Smith said state election officials have instructed poll workers to look for the words “Foreign National” on drivers’ licenses.

The same day Strong announced his bill, an 1819 News post stated “that nothing stops these migrants from registering to vote or casting a ballot.” 1819 News is a website that was once owned by the Alabama Policy Institute.

“Concerned citizens may be the only reliable stay against possible election interference and fraud,” the article warned.

The article reported that a staffer at the Limestone County Board of Registrar’s Office stated that the registrar does not vet the citizenship of voters and that “if they have a valid driver’s license, they’ll be able to register to vote.” The name of the staffer was not reported.

Smith said the information shared in the article about her office was false.

“Nobody said that in this office,” Smith said. “Nobody said you could lie about anything.” Efforts to reach 1819 News for a response were not immediately successful Saturday.

Smith said voters are asked to declare that what they have reported is true when they register to vote, including their citizenship status.

“(Immigrant identification) numbers are not acceptable identification numbers for the purpose of voter registration and would never verify in our voter registration system,” Smith said.

A day earlier in Georgia – a key swing state for former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris – Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger urged Elon Musk pull from X an “obviounsly fake” video that showed a Haitian immigrant with fake identification voting multiple times. Georgia has found that 20 of the 8.2 million people registered to vote in the state are not U.S. citizens.

Raffensperger’s statement came a day after The Daily Wire, a national right wing media site, reported that several Alabama cities “are overrun by Haitian migrants” and that residents fear the towns “will become the next Springfield, Ohio.”

Springfield was thrust into the national spotlight when Trump falsely claimed in the presidential debate that Haitian migrants there were eating cats and dogs.

Haitian immigrants have legally moved to Alabama after being granted Temporary Protected Status due to gang violence in Haiti.

There is no exact data on how many Haitians are currently living in Alabama. In 2023, there were 2,370 Haitians living in the state.

This past summer, the Haitian community in Albertville faced “hateful rhetoric” after a photo of Haitians taking a bus to work at a local poultry factory was shared online with the false claim that they were being secretly bused into the country.

Similar rhetoric has sprung up in other Alabama cities, including Sylacauga, Enterprise and Athens.

“(The Haitian community has) been excellent to work with. They’ve been gracious for any help that’s been offered to them,” said Emmett Moore, director of the Athens-Limestone Family Resource Center.

The center helps Haitian immigrant families with employment, food and other basic needs. “They seem like perfect people that you’d want to have as your neighbors,” Moore said.

Limestone County District Attorney Brian Jones said he has received no complaints about immigrants trying to register to vote or about any crimes involving Haitians.

“I haven’t had a single criminal case come in yet, in the county system, where the Haitian has been the defendant.”

It is rare for immigrants to attempt to vote in the United States, said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the non-profit Migration Policy Institute based in Washington, D.C.

Bush-Joseph said legal immigrants are not incentivized to vote because any illegal activity could lose them their right to remain in the country.

“Local election officials have consistently said that noncitizen voting is exceedingly rare. One called it a ‘fake problem,’” Bush-Joseph added.

Carlos Aleman, the director of the Hispanic and Immigrant Center of Alabama, said legal immigrants do not think about voting because they are not citizens and neither political party has succeeded in resolving immigration policy, giving them little incentive.

“This is just irresponsible and reckless speculation that anyone would do this,” he said about illegal voting. “I think it’s disappointing as to how easily they can just say things without having any evidence of these things having occurred.”

In October, a group of voters sued Alabama for the state’s attempt to remove voters it claimed were noncitizens. The Department of Justice also filed suit against the state.

The program purged more than 3,000 people from voter rolls and referred them to the Alabama Attorney General’s Office for possible prosecution. Of those, more than 2,074 were later deemed eligible to vote.

On Oct. 16, U.S. District Judge Anna M. Manasco issued a preliminary injunction instructing Secretary of State Wes Allen to restore the affected voters to active status and notify them of their eligibility.