How a post falsely claiming migrants are registering to vote spread to millions in four weeks

ALLENTOWN, Pa. — The rumor started as a post on X.

The post published in early April misrepresented federal data from the Social Security Administration to falsely suggest that hundreds of thousands of migrants may have registered to vote in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Texas. One hour later, the tweet got the rocket fuel it needed to take off: X owner Elon Musk reposted it with the comment, “extremely concerning.”

In less than four days, the false narrative was widely shared on X, Facebook and Instagram. Donald Trump and Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene soon joined in, respectively proclaiming, “What is going on???” and “Are migrants registering to vote using SSN?” By the end of the month, the original tweet and Musk’s had generated more than 125 million views.

All the while, election officials in the three states publicly debunked the claims, and multiple news organizations and a news literacy nonprofit published fact-checking articles providing accurate context. Yet the rumors continued spreading — showing how virulent misinformation is and how casually it can spread on social media.

Under federal laws, only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections, and states are required to regularly update their voter rolls, or voter registration lists, to remove anyone ineligible.

The X post that triggered this latest wave of migrant voting misinformation used publicly available federal data from the Help America Vote Verification (HAVV) program, which shows the total number of times Texas, Pennsylvania and Arizona requested the Social Security Administration to verify a voter’s identity using their Social Security numbers.

While verification requests are not necessarily a one-to-one tally of people registering to