Post about noncitizen voting for Mamdani was a joke
A Texas Republican running for U.S. Senate has claimed that a non-citizen traveled to New York and illegally voted for Democratic Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani in the Nov. 4, 2025, election in America’s financial capital. But this is false; the politician misinterpreted a joke from an X user who said it was a hoax.
“This is exactly how elections are stolen,” Alexander Duncan (archived here), a 2026 U.S. Senate candidate from Texas, said in a November 4, 2025 article on X.
“This man is openly bragging about how he arrived in New York two days ago and is neither a resident nor a citizen, but he was still able to go vote for the jihadist Mamdani.”
Duncan was commenting on a post from an X account called “@YazanXBT,” which shared a photo of a ballot and wrote: “I arrived in New York 2 days ago.
Screenshot of X taken on November 5, 2025
Mamdani, a 34-year-old self-described socialist, became the city’s first Muslim mayor after broadcasters projected him the winner over former state Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Duncan’s position was promoted several times after news of Mamdani’s victory at the so-called “Election Integrity Community” over X, a group launched by billionaire Elon Musk’s super PAC ahead of the 2024 election to collect “potential cases of voter fraud and irregularities.”
“Illegal aliens voted in New York,” one group member wrote.
Misinformation about non-citizen voting has already plagued the 2024 presidential election. But @YazanXBT’s post was a joke, the user himself said in a later post (archived here).
“This is a joke, btw. This is where I took the photo from,” the account wrote, sharing an October 29 post from another user sharing a photo of their completed ballot for Mamdani (archived here). “Anyone who doubts the legitimacy of the elections is a fool.”
Screenshot of X taken on November 5, 2025
Screenshot of X taken on November 5, 2025
This user acknowledged in his response to @YazanXBT’s posts that the photo showed “my ballot” and went on to say that supporters of US President Donald Trump “would really believe anything” (archived here and here).
In a mocking response to Duncan, @YazanXBT wrote that the candidate had been “enraged” (archived here).
Electoral guarantees
To register to vote in New York, a person must be a U.S. citizen, reside in the city for at least 30 days, and be 18 years old on or before Election Day, according to the city’s Board of Elections (archived here).
Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, told AFP in a November 4 interview that the city’s election administrators follow an “incredibly detailed checklist” to safeguard elections (archived here).
At the city’s polling stations, for example, residents sign an electronic register of registered voters in order to receive their ballot (archived here).
“It immediately updates the database — the voter rolls — that you showed up and voted,” Lerner said.
Lerner said voters who request absentee ballots are added to a list that prohibits them from voting in person again (archived here).
If a person who does not appear in the poll book arrives at a polling place claiming that they should be registered or that they never received an absentee ballot, they can submit a sworn ballot, which is then checked after Election Day to determine if the voter was eligible (archived here).
Each party in New York City can send poll watchers to monitor the election (archived here).
The conservative Heritage Foundation, which tracks cases of voter fraud, has identified 25 total criminal convictions for election-related offenses in New York State since 1982 (archived here).
AFP has debunked other misinformation about the 2025 US elections here, here and here.
