Posted on October 30, 2014

Non-Citizens Are Voting

John Fund, National Review, October 30, 2014

Could non-citizen voting be a problem in next week’s elections, and perhaps even swing some very close elections?

A new study by two Old Dominion University professors, based on survey data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, indicated that 6.4 percent of all non-citizens voted illegally in the 2008 presidential election, and 2.2 percent in the 2010 midterms. Given that 80 percent of non-citizens lean Democratic, they cite Al Franken ’s 312-vote win in the 2008 Minnesota U.S. Senate race as one likely tipped by non-citizen voting. As a senator, Franken cast the 60th vote needed to make Obamacare law.

North Carolina features one of the closest Senate races in the country this year, between Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan and Republican Thom Tillis. So what guerrilla filmmaker James O’Keefe, the man who has uncovered voter irregularities in states ranging from Colorado to New Hampshire, has learned in North Carolina is disturbing. This month, North Carolina officials found at least 145 illegal aliens, still in the country thanks to the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, registered to vote. Hundreds of other non-citizens may be on the rolls.

A voter-registration card is routinely issued without any identification check, and undocumented workers can use it for many purposes, including obtaining a driver’s license and qualifying for a job. And if a non-citizen has a voter-registration card, there are plenty of campaign operatives who will encourage him or her to vote illegally.

O’Keefe had a Brazilian-born immigrant investigator pose as someone who wanted to vote but was not a citizen. Greg Amick, the campaign manager for the Democrat running for sheriff in Mecklenburg County (Charlotte), was only too happy to help.

Greg Amick: Here’s a couple of things you can do. You do not have to have your driver’s license, but do you have any sort of identification?

Project Veritas investigator: But I do have my driver’s license.

Amick: Oh, you do. Show ’em that and you’re good.

PV: But the only problem, you know, I don’t want to vote if I’m not legal. I think that’s going to be a problem. I’m not sure.

Amick: It won’t be, it shouldn’t be an issue at all.

PV: No?

Amick: As long as you are registered to vote, you’ll be fine.

But North Carolina officials shouldn’t be “fine” with Amick, who appears to be afoul of a state law making it a felony “for any person, knowing that a person is not a citizen of the United States, to instruct or coerce that person to register to vote or to vote.”

The anything-goes attitude towards non-citizen voting crosses party lines. A campaign worker for the Republican running against Amick’s candidate for sheriff even called her boss before telling the O’Keefe investigator that it was for fine for non-citizens to vote: “Welcome aboard.”

Martin Kelly, whose son is running as a Democrat for superior-court judge in Mecklenburg, was blasé when asked whether non-citizens could vote. Kelly: “If you registered . . . [shrugs shoulders]. All they can do is say no. They can’t do anything else.”

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