How many non-citizens participate in U.S. elections? More than 14percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples indicated that theywere registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-citizens voted. Ourbest guess, based upon extrapolations from the portion of the sample with averified vote, is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2percent of non-citizens voted in 2010.
Because non-citizens tended to favor Democrats (Obama won morethan 80 percent of the votes of non-citizens in the 2008 CCES sample), we findthat this participation was large enough to plausibly account for Democraticvictories in a few close elections. Non-citizen votes could have given SenateDemocrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to passhealth-care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111thCongress. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) won election in 2008 with a victory marginof 312 votes. Votes cast by just 0.65 percent of Minnesota non-citizens couldaccount for this margin. It is also possible that non-citizen votes wereresponsible for Obama\’s 2008 victory in North Carolina. Obama won the state by14,177 votes, so a turnout by 5.1 percent of North Carolina\’s adultnon-citizens would have provided this victory margin
This did not come from a right wing site. This, folks came from Jesse Richman and David Earnest\’s article for the Washington Post.
Yes, that Washington Post.
And if this doesn\’t tell you that voter fraud not only exists, but is changing the results of elections, I don\’t know how to get through to you.
Would requiring a valid ID have prevented these illegal voters from registering? Probably not all of them; some voter fraud is inevitable. But maybe most. And any level of voter fraud prevention is a good thing.
And who is perpetrating the fraud?
To answer that, I will end by repeating part of a blog I wrote yesterday:
When we talk about corruption, what is the operative recommendation? “Follow the money”.
When we talk about voter fraud, it seems to me the operative recommendation is “See who fights against voter IDs”. Keep that in mind and the answer becomes simple to determine:
-Show me a political party which demands people identify themselves before voting, and I will show you a party that wants only legal voters to cast ballots.
-Show me a political party which demands people not identify themselves before voting, so there is no way to check that they have a right to do so, and I will show you a party that wants an open door for non-legal voters to cast ballots.
Do we have two such political parties right now? I doubt you need me to tell you.
