CNN
 — 

A review of the millions of registered voters in Georgia found just 20 noncitizens were registered to vote, Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced Wednesday.

Those 20 people were removed from the state’s voter rolls – which total 8.2 million – and have been referred to local law enforcement, he said. Of the 20, only nine actually ever cast a ballot.

The findings underscore how rare it is for people who are not US citizens to register to vote. It’s illegal in federal elections and those who do register risk incarceration or deportation.

“Georgia is a model when it comes to preventing noncitizen voting,” Raffensperger said at a news conference, adding, “We need to remain constantly vigilant.”

Because of the criminal investigation, the secretary of state’s office said it could not dislose when those nine people voted.

Former President Donald Trump and his conservative allies have latched onto the issue this election season, claiming it’s a widespread problem and that Democrats are relying on noncitizens to swing the election in their favor in November.

“There’s no proof that there is this overwhelming number of noncitizens on the rolls,” Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer in the secretary of state’s office said Wednesday. “Because, the reality is, if you’re a noncitizen and you’re a legal resident and you’re on a path to citizenship, if you try to register to vote, you will never get to be a citizen. It is very high risk, very low reward.”

Raffensperger said his office has opened case files on another 156 individuals whose citizenship status requires additional human investigation.

Speaking to reporters, Sterling also knocked back some of the misinformation floating around the critical battleground state, including a false claim amplified by Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene that voting machines were changing votes.

“There is zero evidence of a machine flipping an individual’s vote,” he said. “Are there elderly people whose hands shake and they probably hit the wrong button slightly, and it didn’t review their ballot properly before they printed it – that’s the main situation we have seen.”

Sterling added: “There is literally zero – and I’m saying this to certain congresspeople in the state – zero evidence of machines flipping votes. And that claim was a lie through 2020, it is a lie now.”