Republicans and Democrats are notorious for electioneering. Don't even pretend that Democrats don't do this shit. It's the Democrat machine in Chicago that set the bar.
The Government Accountability Office estimated that up to 3 percent of individuals called for jury duty from voter registration rolls in just one U.S. district court were not U.S. citizens. While that may not seem like a large number, it’s more than enough to tip close elections — say, Florida in 2000.. Florida has over a million illegal aliens, and the Justice Department has prosecuted non-citizens, including a state-legislature candidate, for voting there. In California, a congressional seat came within 200 votes of being stolen in 1996 by non-citizens’ voting; a city councilmember was permanently disqualified from public office for soliciting non-citizens to vote in Compton in 2001.
After a grand-jury investigation of the 1982 Illinois governor’s race resulted in the conviction of aliens for illegally registering and voting, the U.S. Attorney estimated that there were 80,000 non-citizens registered to vote in Chicago. In 1985, the district director of the Immigration and Naturalization Services testified in the Illinois legislature that 25,000 illegal and 40,000 legal aliens remained registered in Chicago. The grand jury found that aliens registered so they could “obtain documents identifying them as U.S. citizens” and had used their voter registration cards “to obtain a myriad of benefits, from social security to jobs with the Defense Department.” More recently, Bexar County, Texas, found hundreds of aliens registered to vote, some of whom had voted in a dozen local, state, and federal elections, and Harris County found a Norwegian citizen who had voted in a state legislative race decided by only 33 votes. Similar accounts from other states such as Utah and Arizona demonstrate that this is a widespread phenomena.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/ ... -spakovsky (Von Spakovsky is a former Federal Election Commission member and was an assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice -- full disclosure - now with Heritage Foundation).
The weaknesses of the current registration system are to blame. First, in order to make registration easier, federal laws do not require proof of citizenship when registering, and states routinely offer registration to anyone getting a driver’s license, regardless of citizenship. Moreover, federal agencies in charge of immigration and customs enforcement refuse to comply with a federal law that requires them to cooperate with election officials in checking the citizenship status of registered voters. Overall, this amounts to an “honor” system — expecting immigrants, including those who broke the law to come here, to obey the law.
And even if an illegal alien would normally follow the rules, federal law provides an incentive for him to register to vote: Voter-registration cards, obtainable after a limited or no identification check, can be used to verify legal work status. They can also help when it comes to drivers’ licenses.
There are a number of solutions to this problem. The most important is that we must stop relying on an honor system, and require voters to provide proof of citizenship; election officials should have access to the government databases used by employers to verify the citizenship status of prospective employees. The federal government already uses these tools on everyone trying to get a job, negating the argument that proof of citizenship is discriminatory. Arizona, the only state that requires proof of citizenship to register to vote, has already turned away thousands of non-citizens who attempted to register — including almost 3,000 who tried to register when they applied for drivers’ licenses. State and federal courts should notify election officials when potential jurors are excused because they are not U.S. citizens.
Americans may disagree on many areas of immigration policy, but they should not disagree on the basic principle that only citizens should vote. Government officials have an obligation to enforce those laws.
Now - I'm flexible on the solution. But, for fuck's sake -- asking people AT LEAST to prove citizenship to get a voter registration card, and prove that they are who they say they are, seems, at bottom, a bare minimum to preserve some semblance of integrity of the system.
Some Americans argue that alien voting is a nonexistent problem or dismiss reported cases of non-citizen voting as unimportant because, they claim, there are no cases in which non-citizens "intentionally" registered to vote or voted "while knowing that they were ineligible."[6] Even if this latter claim were true-which it is not-every vote cast by a non-citizen, whether an illegal alien or a resident alien legally in the country, dilutes or cancels the vote of a citizen and thus disenfranchises him or her. To dismiss such stolen votes because the non-citizens supposedly did not know they were acting illegally when they cast a vote debases one of the most important Rights of citizens.[7]
The evidence is indisputable that aliens, both legal and illegal, are registering and voting in federal, state, and local elections. Following a mayor's race in Compton, California, for example, aliens testified under oath in court that they voted in the election.[8] In that case, a candidate who was elected to the city council was permanently disqualified from holding public office in California for soliciting non-citizens to register and vote.[9] The fact that non-citizens registered and voted in the election would never have been discovered except for the fact that it was a very close election and the incumbent mayor, who lost by less than 300 votes, contested it.[10]
Similarly, a 1996 congressional race in California may have been stolen by non-citizen voting.[11] Republican incumbent Bob Dornan was defending himself against a spirited challenger, Democrat Loretta Sanchez. Sanchez won the election by just 979 votes, and Dornan contested the election in the U.S. House of Representatives. His challenge was dismissed after an investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform turned up only 624 invalid votes by non-citizens who were present in the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) database because they had applied for citizenship, as well as another 124 improper absentee ballots.[12] The investigation, however, could not detect illegal aliens, who were not in the INS records.
The Oversight Committee pointed out the elephant in the room: "f there is a significant number of 'documented aliens,' aliens in INS records, on the Orange County voter registration rolls, how many illegal or undocumented aliens may be registered to vote in Orange County?"[13] There is a strong possibility that, with only about 200 votes determining the winner,[14] enough undetected aliens registered and voted to change the outcome of the election. This is particularly true since the California Secretary of State complained that the INS refused his request to check the entire Orange County voter registration file, and no complete check of all of the individuals who voted in the congressional race was ever made.[15]
http://www.heritage.org/research/report ... zen-voting
Non-citizen voting is likely growing at the same rate as the alien population in the United States; but because of deficiencies in state law and the failure of federal agencies to comply with federal law, there are almost no procedures in place that allow election officials to detect, deter, and prevent non-citizens from registering and voting. Instead, officials are largely dependent on an "honor system" that expects aliens to follow the law. There are numerous cases showing the failure of this honor system.
An alien from Belize, for example, testified that he and his two sisters were able to register easily because they were not asked for any identification or proof of citizenship and lied about where they were born. After securing registration, he voted in Chicago.
Once such aliens are registered, of course, they receive the same encouragement to vote from campaigns' and parties' get-out-the-vote programs and advertisements that all other registered voters receive. Political actors have no way to distinguish between individuals who are properly registered and non-citizens who are illegally registered.
The U.S. Attorney at the time estimated that there were at least 80,000 illegal aliens registered to vote in Chicago, and dozens were indicted and convicted for registering and voting.[22]
The grand jury's report resulted in a limited cleanup of the voter registration rolls in Chicago, but just one year later, INS District Director A. D. Moyer testified before a state legislative task force that 25,000 illegal and 40,000 legal aliens remained on the rolls in Chicago
http://www.heritage.org/research/report ... zen-voting
