Posted on 10/17/2016 4:58:48 PM PDT by Beautiful_Gracious_Skies
MADISON, Wis. – Independents and so-called “anti-establishment” voters have had much to say about the presidential race so far.
But could illegal immigrants and other non-citizens ultimately decide the contest?
One elections expert said that is a distinct possibility.
“My biggest fear in the upcoming election is people who are not U.S. citizens registering and voting and potentially making a difference … if we have a close election,” said Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. The former Federal Election Commission member pointed to cases across the country, particularly in high illegal immigrant entry point states, where non-citizens have been caught registering and voting in elections.
The numbers are alarming.
THE DECIDING FACTOR: In a closely contested presidential election where every vote will count, voter fraud among illegal immigrants could be the decider, an election law expert says. An academic report published in the December 2014 issue of Electoral Studies found more than 14 percent of non-citizens in 2008 and 2010 samples reported being registered to vote.
“Our best guess, based upon extrapolations from the portion of the sample with a verified vote, is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010,” reported David Earnest and Jesse Richman, political science professors at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va.
The data was drawn from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, which included 32,800 observations in 2008 and 55,400 in 2010. The data pool provides “sufficient samples of the non-immigrant sub-population, with 339 non-citizen respondents in 2008 and 489 in 210,” the authors wrote. “Most non-citizens do not register, let alone vote. But enough do that their participation can change the outcome of close races,” the researchers wrote in the Washington Post.
In a tight presidential contest, 2.2 percent of non-citizens voting – and certainly 6.4 percent – could make a difference in the outcome of the election. The vast majority of non-citizen votes went to Democratic candidates, according Earnest and Richman. The study does not provide definitive total vote numbers, and the study’s methodology has been criticized inside and outside the scientific community. The authors stand by their research.
Von Spakovsky said the Obama administration’s Department of Justice is turning a blind eye to the problem – by design. The elections expert has personal experience with the federal government’s lax oversight.
He served on a Virginia county elections board that found nearly 300 non-citizens registered to vote in that county alone. “We took them off the list. About half of them had actually illegally voted,” Von Spakovsky told Wisconsin Watchdog on the Vicki McKenna Show earlier this week. “We sent that information to the Obama administration, to the Justice Department, because it’s a felony what (the non-citizens) were doing under federal law.”
“They had no interest in it.”
The Justice Department, in fact, has targeted states that have attempted to purge ineligible voters from their registration rolls, citing the Voting Rights Act and the National Voter Registration Act. And the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has refused to share its immigration database with election officials. Proponents of expanded voter rolls accuse critics of fostering a dark conspiracy that voter fraud lurks around every election booth. They sound very confident that voter fraud has been wiped from the map of fair and open elections. Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the left-wing Brennan Center for Justice, in 2012 declared that voter fraud claims generally amount to “smoke without any fire.”
“Voter fraud would be a real problem if it actually happened. It’s a serious crime, and one that can undermine our democracy. Fortunately, it’s a crime we have largely figured out how to prevent,” she wrote in U.S. News & World Report. She pointed to a South Carolina case in which a review found that complaints about more than 900 dead people voting in elections turned out to be nothing more than “clerical errors, bad data matching, and stray marks on scanners.”
But in many cases, efforts to track voter fraud have been pushed aside by opponents who charge that such campaigns are politically driven, even “racist.” Case in point, Milwaukee in 2004. The city formed a task force to look at incidents of voting irregularities. “Apparently it was so embarrassing that city officials dismantled it after it came out with a very critical report that showed all kinds of discrepancies and potential fraud and other things,” Von Spakovsky said.
While 33 states, including Wisconsin, have enacted voter ID laws, he said that’s just a good first step in preventing fraud in the elections system. He said proof of citizenship will be critical in making sure non-citizens aren’t allowed to determine the outcome of the 2016 elections.
Again, the federal government is fighting the states trying to enhance those efforts.
"Best guess, .... is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010,”
And now it's two national elections past 2008. We must assume that there are many more non-citizens being encouraged to vote. They will be emboldened to register and vote because no one is being punished or held accountable for the act. It is a felony and they should have their residency revoked and face deportation.
In Florida the official final vote count in the 2000 Bush/Gore election gave George “Dubya” Bush a win by only 537 votes out of almost 6 million votes cast.
I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the number of illegals voting in the state today far exceed the 537 vote margin of 2000.
Absolutely.
A lot of them came to get away from what they are voting to put in office...
Yes but the Democrats will give them free stuff. They are not smart enough that they are just jumping from one fire and into another.
True...
Actually, the ones that moved to the USA to get away from Castro or Chavez are firmly Republican and support Donald Trump.
And then each generation gets weaker and more liberal as they did not experience the horror of a ‘hope ‘n change’ to communism. They allowed their kids to become indoctrinated by the public school system for socialism. So sad.
Yeah...When you think about it, most of those coming recently (both legal and illegal) have come for the “free stuff”...And they’ll get it here as long as it holds out...When our country goes the route of third world, they’ll move on for MORE “free stuff”...
Never ending cycle, I suppose...
The risk of this would be FAR higher without an Electoral College system. That’s why libs always want to trash it and use direct popular vote.
We need to assemble the new “journo-list” based on the WikiLeaks, as before. This needs to happen immediately, so that the first comment on any given article is identified mung them.
I remember posting the “journeys-list” on the message board of our local newspaper and leftists lost thier minds!
Possible? Heck - Hillary’s banking on it.
Maybe that talking mouthpiece from the Brennan center needs to meet up with the NYC voting commissioner. He knows it’s going on and said so on camera. It’s happened in Wisco as well. Bussing voters from place to place in ‘08.
We get to show ID now, but in the ‘12 and our primary this year, I was told that I didn’t need to show it by both of the “operatives” manning the check in desk.
elections are decided at the loading dock of the county recorders office after the doors close and the lights go down
County recorders are political appointees and "early voting" is just a misnomer for "early cheating"
I will be very surprised if Trump gets it..in fact I will be stunned the elections are rigged here : http://iaogo.org/
The Left is pushing this to the point where the only remedy will be very.....ugly.....for THEM.
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