- Blue states make it easier for illegals to vote
- 38 states have inaccurate voting rules
- DNC chair longtime advocate for non-citizen voters
In the next Drill Down, Peter Schweizer discovers the ways that blue states have made it easier for illegal ballots to impact the 2020 election.
Full Transcript
It will be easier to cast illegal ballots in 2020, and that isn’t an accident.
Hi, I’m Peter Schweizer, and this is the Drill Down, where we drill down on important information and facts about Washington D.C., cronyism, and corruption.
When you think of the 2020 election cycle, odds are you will picture the two dozen presidential candidates currently jockeying for dollars and airtime across the country.
But a number of things have happened that have received far less attention than the presidential campaign that you should be aware of, because they will impact not only who you get to vote for, but who actually will get to vote.
States like New York and California have recently passed laws that will make it easier for illegal voters to cast ballots.
In 2016, California became the first state to legalize the third-party collection and delivery of absentee ballots, a practice that is known as ballot harvesting.[i] Essentially, paid political operatives can now go to targeted homes, request ballots on their behalf, then collect them and deliver them to the election offices.
In the first election cycle after the law was passed, Democrats flipped every Republican controlled congressional seat in Orange County, once considered a Republican stronghold. Republicans now control only 7 of California’s 53 House seats.[ii]
The problem with this change in law is it puts significant public trust on groups, private groups, that are paid to influence the outcomes of elections. And we know these groups don’t always play by the rules.
In the summer of 2019, 9 people were indicted on 14 charges of voter fraud after undercover detectives busted operatives bribing homeless people on LA’s Skid Row. They were falsifying signatures for ballot initiatives and voter registration forms.[iii]
That’s why other law changes, like one in New York, are so troubling.
New York state just passed a bill this June, in 2019, granting driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants, joining 12 other states and Washington D.C.[iv]
The problem? Thanks to federal law, you can register to vote when you get your driver’s license,[v] and there’s virtually no mechanism to keep illegal immigrants from registering to vote, whether they know they are violating the law or not.
That illegal voters are registered is not in dispute. A recent study found 38 states have counties with more registered voters than citizens of legal voting age.[vi]
So what happens once you get an illegal voter registered?
To answer that question, agents from the New York Department of Investigation went undercover and posed as illegal voters[vii]. And guess what? 61 of their 63 attempts to cast illegal ballots were successful, and one of their two unsuccessful attempts were thwarted only because the mother of the felon the agent was posing as was working at the polling station.[viii]
It’s unbelievable.
Between ballot harvesting in California and illegal immigrants with driver’s licenses in New York, it’s clear that Democrats are making it easier for illegal ballots to be cast. And I don’t think we should be surprised.
Current Democratic Party chairman Tom Perez used to be president of a group called CASA de Maryland, an ACORN-like organization whose stated mission was to expand the rights of noncitizens to vote.[ix] In fact, Perez’s hometown of Takoma Park Maryland has been allowing noncitizen voting since 1992, and as a councilman in Maryland in 2003, Tom Perez sought to force local governments to accept Mexican and Guatemalan ID cards.[x]
Even the current argument over whether the US government can ask Census respondents about their citizenship status is related to the upcoming election.
When Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced that the citizenship question would be included in the Census, Democrat Attorneys General from across the country sued to block the move, with Tom Perez saying the move amounted to a form of voter suppression.[xi]
Now, we know that major elections can swing with just a few hundred votes. Al Franken became the country’s 60th Democrat Senator by just 312 votes, a margin which studies have shown was almost certainly gained by illegal votes.[xii]
My organization, the Government Accountability Institute, found that over 2,100 double votes were cast in the 2016 election in just the state of Florida alone—that’s four times the margin that decided the 2000 Presidential election.[xiii]
So, while the many candidates clamor on stage for attention, it’s fair to say that the integrity of our voting system is also up for grabs.
Choosing our elected officials is one of the great American traditions, and political parties fight, claw, and spend billions of dollars to influence the outcome.
But everyone should agree that only legal voters should get to decide the outcome of our elections.
I’m Peter Schweizer and thank you for watching the Drill Down. For more episodes, find us on social media, or go to drilldowntv.com.
Sources:
- Jeff Horseman, “Is Ballot Harvesting Legal in California? Yes, and That Worries Some Republicans,” Press Enterprise, March 6, 2019, https://www.pe.com/2019/03/06/is-ballot-harvesting-legal-in-california-yes-and-that-worries-some-republicans/.
- “California,” Govtrack.us, accessed July 30, 2019, https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/CA#representatives.
- Eric Leonard, “Indictments Charge Widespread Voting Fraud Row in Los Angeles,” NBC News, June 28, 2019, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Indictments-Charge-Widespread-Voting-Fraud-Scheme-in-Los-Angeles-511971752.html.
- Vivian Wang, “Driver’s Licenses for the Undocumented Are Approved in Win for Progressives,” New York Times, June 17, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/nyregion/undocumented-immigrants-drivers-licenses-ny.html.
- Wendy Underhill, “Voter Identification Requirements: Voter ID Laws,” National Conference of State Legislatures, January 17, 2019, http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/voter-id.aspx.
- Mark Hemingway, “Who Will Clean Up America’s Voter Rolls?” Real Clear Investigations, July 11, 2019, https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/07/10/who_will_clean_up_americas_voter_rolls.html.
- Rose Gill Hearn, Report on the New York City Board of Elections’ Employment Practices, Operations, and Election Administration, “Election Administration and Efficiency Concerns,” p. 3, New York City Department of Investigation, December 2013, https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doi/reports/pdf/2013/2013-12-30-BOE_Unit_Report.pdf.
- Ibid.
- Katrina Trinko, “Obama’s Illegal-Immigrant Booster,” National Review, March 22, 2013, https://www.nationalreview.com/2013/03/obamas-illegal-immigrant-booster-katrina-trinko/.
- Ibid.
- Jack Heretik, “DNC Chairman Equates Census Citizenship Question to Voter Suppression,” Free Beacon, March 27, 2019, https://freebeacon.com/politics/dnc-chairman-equates-census-citizenship-question-voter-suppression/.
- Jesse Richman, “Could Non-Citizens Decide the November Election?” Washington Post, October 24, 2014, washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/10/24/could-non-citizens-decide-the-november-election/?utm_term=.ab03d21aafc0.
- Federal Election Commission, “2000 Official Presidential General Election Results,” last updated December 2001, https://transition.fec.gov/pubrec/2000presgeresults.htm.