The Debate Americans Are Not Having

The Stream ^ | Kerri Toloczko

[Heartlander]

Tonight, the presidential candidates will have their first debate. But there is one critical election issue the American people are not debating at all. They agree that non-U.S. citizens should not vote in U.S. elections.

This is a convenient opinion for Americans to hold as it is also the law.

The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) and other federal codes and state constitutions require that only citizens vote in our elections. This is unequivocal. It is in writing. It is common sense.

The problem with laws is that people break them — including noncitizens who commit one federal crime by registering to vote and then another by actually voting. But because federal statutes are silent on requiring documentary proof of citizenship for either step, states have not demanded citizenship proof for voter registration on federal forms.

These registration forms are provided to people applying for a driver’s license or state ID with no consideration to whether that person is a citizen or not. And the entire citizen “confirmation” process is an innocuous checkbox on the federal form that many registrants fill in just because it’s there.

For noncitizen newcomers not proficient in English, all they know is that a government official handed them a form to fill out with a box to check — or that a liberal activist group told them to check it.

Earlier this year, Tea Party Patriots commissioned a poll of citizens who vote regularly and found that 86 percent believe “proof of U.S. citizenship should be required to register to vote in American elections” and “only U.S. citizens should vote in elections in America.”

Who is the clueless other 13 percent? Leftwing political elites, their friends in the deceitful media, and the current occupants of the White House and vice president’s…

[Heartlander]

See also: “Only Citizens Vote Week”