Two Stories About Voting That Are Really the Same Story

Wisconsin, my home state, passed a voter ID bill years ago, but it has never been implemented due to legal challenges from Democratic Party groups.   They say it disenfranchises the poor citizen who may not have a photo ID.   Reading between the lines, what they mean is that it disenfranchises the poor black citizen and that Republican efforts to pass and enforce voter ID laws are racist attempts to "suppress" the black vote, which, of course, votes predominantly for Democrats.   Whether that is so (the huge black turnouts in 2008 and 2012 suggest that African-Americans don't have trouble getting to the polls), and whether it actually shows the racism of liberals (are black voters really too stupid to obtain photo IDs... I doubt it)... those are topics for another day.

But here are two stories that show that the issue of photo IDs isn't that having them disenfranchises American citizens, but that not having them enfranchises non-citizens.   Here's the first story, about a study of voting patterns in the past few elections:

But persuasive evidence that vote fraud is both real and consequential has appeared. A new academic paper published in the journal Electoral Studies provides evidence of voting by non-citizens that directly contradicts the Democrats’ “nothing to see here” mantra. Under the neutral headline “Do Non-Citizens Vote in U.S. Elections?” three professors from Virginia universities answer in the affirmative. Using an enormous database of voters nationwide (32,800 from 2008, and 55,400 in 2012), the authors find that about one-quarter of the non-citizens who participated in the survey were registered to vote. 

Studying survey responses, the authors judge that non-citizen voters tend to favor Democratic candidates by large margins. 

In many states, their participation wouldn’t be large enough to make a difference, but in North Carolina in 2008, the authors calculate, non-citizens may well have tipped the state into Obama’s column. “So what?” you may say. Even if John McCain had won that state, it wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the national election. True, but remember the presidential race in 2000? Remember “hanging chad” Florida? 

Several House seats, and one very significant Senate seat, were probably won by Democrats on the strength of illegal votes. In 2008, the authors note, Senator Al Franken won by just 312 votes in Minnesota. That seat was the sixtieth vote to give Democrats a filibuster-proof supermajority to pass major legislation such as Obamacare. “[Voting] participation by just 0.65 percent of non-citizens in Minnesota is sufficient to account for the entirety of Franken’s margin,” the authors write. “Our best guess is that nearly ten times as many voted.”

Now, if that's not chilling enough, here's today's story about how La Raza, the Hispanic immigration pro-amnesty group, is promoting a list of states where there are no requirements for photo ID to vote:

The pro-amnesty Hispanic activist organization the National Council of La Raza helpfully promoted a Washington Post article explaining which states people can vote in without having to use a photo ID. 

“Voter ID laws are at-issue across the country, with newly Republican-controlled legislatures having passed them in numerous states after the 2010 election,” explained The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake. “Most states still request some form of ID, but don’t require it. Another 20 states don’t require identification. In case you’re wondering where your state is at in all of this, a helpful (sic) graphic from the Post’s graphics team.” 

So who ended up using the Post’s helpful graphic? The country’s foremost pro-amnesty Hispanic immigrant organization.

Hmmmm...

This is why Republicans have to win outside the margin of cheating.   Because if the Democrats can steal a close election, they will steal a close election, with non-registered voters, felon voters, and non-citizen voters casting ballots for liberal Democratic candidates who, not incidentally, plan to enact more and more wealth transfer programs and less and less restrictions on immigration and, ultimately, amnesty for illegal immigrants.