OPINION:
The Democrats have tried to sell the notion that there’s no such thing as voter fraud in America — that it’s only an urban legend that thousands of people who have no business in a polling place have cast illicit ballots and altered outcomes of elections.
But the fraud is real. A revelation of voter fraud in Texas is instructive. Nearly 100,000 legal residents lacking U.S. citizenship were discovered in an audit of voter rolls in Texas, with as many as 58,000 illegal voters found to have cast illicit ballots in one or more elections since 1996. The instances of wrongful voting were turned up during a year-long investigation by the Texas Secretary of State’s office. Voter registration forms filed when residents apply for a driver’s license were matched against green-card and visa-holder databases.
With 33 persons prosecuted for voter fraud in 2018, and 97 between 2005 and 2017, Texas is aggressively going after the scofflaws. “Every single instance of illegal voting threatens democracy in our state and deprives individual Texans of their voice,” says Attorney General Ken Paxton. “My Election Fraud Unit stands ready to investigate and prosecute crimes against the democratic process when needed.”
Texas isn’t alone in facing up to the challenge of ensuring its citizens are not disenfranchised when their ballots are negated by votes that shouldn’t be cast. Pennsylvania, like some other states, has investigated allegations of voter fraud but for partisan reasons has resisted releasing its findings, but under pressure has now conceded that it found more than 11,000 illegal voters on its registration rolls.
The Heritage Foundation maintains a database of voter fraud occurrences from across the nation. At last count, it lists 1,177 proven cases, including 1,019 convictions, 48 civil penalties, 81 diversion programs in which defendants can avoid conviction by completing pre-trial rehabilitation, and 29 cases in which a court or governing body has overturned election results or ordered a new election owing to fraud. “This is not an exhaustive list,” Heritage says, “but simply a sampling that demonstrates the many different ways in which fraud is committed.”
Voter lists riddled with errors and scattered cases of actual fraud do not add up to a conclusive, widespread conspiracy to steal elections from coast to coast. But efforts — mostly by Democrats — to characterize measures taken to ensure vote integrity as voter suppression are far off the mark. The liberal Brennan Center for Justice, for example, greets online visitors with “The myth of voter fraud,” inviting viewers to peruse a study of the issue written in 2007. The world has continued to turn over the past decade, and the recent election fraud headlines in Texas, Pennsylvania and elsewhere cannot be treated like the ancient tall tales of Zeus and Poseidon.
Following his unlikely White House victory in 2016, President Trump claimed the number of illegal voters added up to “millions and millions,” an exaggeration on the face of it, and his Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, rightly seen by Democrats and Republicans alike as a federal intrusion on states’ rights, disappeared before his broad claim could be validated. Fair elections are the responsibilities of the 50 states and territories.
But safeguarding the election process means careful supervision at the nation’s polling places on Election Day, and it also means closely examining motor-voter laws that enable citizens to apply for a driver’s license and a voter registration card at the same time. A means of distinguishing between citizens and non-citizens is needed, and enacting legislation to do so will test the virtue of Capitol Hill lawmakers who reject simple concepts like the fundamental importance of fair elections. Without such fairness, who can respect the results of elections?
In September, the House voted 279-72 (with 69 merely voting “present”) for House Resolution 1071, which recognizes that “allowing illegal immigrants the right to vote devalues the franchise and diminishes the voting power of United States citizens.” When common-sense statements encounter opposition, common-sense action is threatened.
When Benjamin Franklin and the other Founding Fathers emerged from Independence Hall at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, a bystander asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got — a Republic or a Monarchy?” Franklin replied with a warning that applies to our own times: “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
With the struggle for American independence fading swiftly into the pages of history, indifference to voter fraud by those in high places is an ominous sign. “Keeping the Republic” requires keeping it real on Election Day.
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