The latest plunge into the unsettled controversy over noncitizens voting in U.S. elections is a study that finds the number of unqualified voters is substantially higher than what previously has been documented, based on post-election polling results.

Using data from a Harvard/YouGov study, which questions tens of thousands of voters every two years, the research group Just Facts reports that up to 5.7 million noncitizens in toto may have voted in the 2008 election, The Washington Times reports. That’s a considerable increase from a study of the same data by professors at Old Dominion University in Virginia, which concluded that in the same year, between 38,000 and 2.8 million noncitizens voted. Those earlier findings have been challenged by liberals, who insist noncitizen voters are a nonproblem.

As to the difference in results of both studies, Just Facts President James D. Agresti says, “I calculated the margin of sampling error in a more cautious way to ensure greater confidence in the results, and I used a slightly different methodology that I think is more accurate.”

This, on the heels of a Public Interest Legal Foundation report, which documented that out of 5,500 noncitizen voter registrants in Virginia, more than 1,800 cast ballots between 2011 and 2017.

Rather than debating the accuracy of these studies and their methodologies, what’s needed is a definitive assessment of an issue that isn’t going away.

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