In Reality Check stories, Star-Telegram journalists dig deeper into questions over facts, consequences and accountability. Read more. Story idea? RealityCheck@star-telegram.com.
Fox News personality Maria Bartiromo caused a stir when she posted on social media Sunday that Democrats were registering immigrants to vote at several sites in Fort Worth and Weatherford.
“From a friend …,” the post on X begins. “Friend of mine’s wife had to take her 16 yr old son to the DMV this week for a new license. Couldn’t get an online appointment(all full) so went in person and had to go to 3 DMV’s to get something done. First DMV was in Weatherford. Had a massive line of immigrants getting licenses and had a tent and table outside the front door of the DMV registering them to vote!”
The post goes on to claim that the friend’s wife (or friend of a friend’s wife — it’s unclear) saw the same thing occurring at two Department of Motor Vehicles locations in Fort Worth. It does not specify when the alleged registration activities occurred.
A representative for Fox News contacted the Star-Telegram Tuesday to say that the methods used to attempt to contact Bartiromo — an old email address and a Facebook message — were insufficient. The representative noted that Republican politicians have made similar statements about Democrats registering immigrants to vote, and said Bartiromo was only reporting what a source told her.
Brady Gray, chair of the Republican party in Parker County, where Weatherford is located, said post on X Monday night that he was unable to verify Bartiromo’s friend’s wife’s account .
While Bartiromo herself did not say the word “illegal,” her followers did not hesitate to make that assumption.
“Why are Democrats setting up voter registration tables outside DMV’s and registering illegal immigrants to vote ?!,” said a person whose account is named Mary M33. “This is happening in Tarrant County and you can bet it’s happening across the state.”
Several other commenters took Bartiromo to mean noncitizens, as well. But, is there any truth behind the claim?
Were ‘illegal’ immigrants being registered at the DMV?
Bartiromo’s statement was “simply false,” according to Sgt. William Lockridge, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Contrary to Bartiromo’s friend’s wife’s account, there is no office for the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles in Weatherford. Folks there get their licenses at a DPS Driver License office.
Still, no such tent and table were set up outside the office last week.
“None of it is true,” Lockridge said, adding that the assumption that non-white Texans lined up to get their driver licenses are immigrants or illegal is “kind of racist.”
“Just because these people aren’t white, that doesn’t mean they’re illegal,” he said.
There was a table set outside the DPS Driver License office in Lake Worth on Friday, Lockridge said, but not at the other two sites mentioned in Bartiromo’s post.
The Tarrant County Democratic Party did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
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Tarrant County GOP Chair Bo French replied to Bartilomo’s post suggesting she invite him onto her show “to discuss.”
French did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bartiromo’s post falls in line with a long trend of false claims about noncitizens being able to vote, according to political communication expert Mariana Sánchez Santos.
“It is absolutely not new. It is something that we see every election,” said Sanchez, who earned her doctorate in political communication from American University in Washington, D.C.
The Fox News personality is just a link in a chain of misinformation that goes all the way to the top, she said.
Former President Donald Trump began suggesting that unauthorized migrants will vote in the election back in January.
Bartiromo has 1.3 million followers on X. That kind of influence means she does not have to be correct, or even use the word “illegal” in her post, to have the desired effect, Sánchez said. The message will filter down to smaller influencers, who will repeat it until the “rumor takes on a life of its own.”
Bartiromo’s post had 1.1 million views as of Monday afternoon.
And such rumors tend to be hard to kill. Sánchez alluded to X owner Elon Musk’s recent sharing of manipulated audio of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris disparaging President Joe Biden last month. Musk eventually deleted the post and apologized, but the apology post received only a fraction of the attention the falsified audio got.
“Sometimes when the fact checking is published, it doesn’t have the same life or vitality than the than the original disinformation,” she said, citing the importance of institutions like the Texas DPS in debunking such claims.
The post was not Bartiromo’s first instance of spreading false information. In November 2020, after Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch circulated a New York Post editorial in which he told Trump to “stop the ‘stolen election’ rhetoric” and circulated the piece internally in the company, Bartiromo went on her Sunday morning show and talked about the claim that Trump won the election .
Her embrace of the conspiracy theory that went on to be called the Big Lie led Fox News into a legal battle that saw the company pay Dominion Voting Systems a $787 million settlement.
Can noncitizens vote in U.S. elections?
There are several legal bulwarks that ensure that people who are not U.S. citizens cannot vote, according to SMU political science professor Calvin Jillson.
“There are multiple layers of protection against noncitizens voting in American elections,” he said. “It’s illegal in federal law, it’s illegal in state law, and it is very, very rare. Even in Texas, where you’ve got Attorney General Paxton scouring the countryside for examples of illegal voting, it’s very, very difficult to find.”
Jillson called the notion that people in the country illegally would be able register to vote outside a DPS office “implausible,” because the applications would be vetted and ultimately rejected.
Noncitizens making it all the way to the ballot box may be “highly unlikely,” according to Tarrant County Republican election judge Kal Silverberg, “but I’m not saying it doesn’t happen.”
“It occasionally happens when required paperwork or follow up paperwork or something is not included in the initial voter registration,” Silverberg said.
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