To Navarette: Yes! There are really people who believe illegals vote! I'm one of them.

March 25, 2007

One of the most distressing aspects concerning the eight fired U.S. attorneys is what happened to David Iglesias of New Mexico, and what it tells us about how allegations of voter fraud have become a proxy for anxiety over illegal immigration.

First, try this: Whenever you hear the phrase “voter fraud,” substitute “surging Hispanic political power.”

Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson were so fearful about voter fraud (“surging Hispanic political power”) and how it might hurt Republicans and benefit Democrats in New Mexico, that they tried to pressure Iglesias to make prosecutions out of whole cloth. When he refused, state Republican Party officials complained to the White House, where others were also concerned with voter fraud (“surging Hispanic political power”). After Republicans took a “thumpin' ” in the 2006 midterm elections, Iglesias' name was suddenly added to a list at the Justice Department of the U.S. attorneys slated to get the ax.

Context is everything. This isn't about allegations of the dead voting, or even of live folks voting more than once. In New Mexico, and anywhere in the Southwest, when someone says they're worried about voter fraud (“surging Hispanic political power”), you know they're talking about the possibility of illegal immigrants going to the polls. And since in these parts, most illegal immigrants happen to be Hispanic, the issue comes with built-in and not-so-subtle ethnic overtones.

Don't misunderstand. It is not that the nation's 40 million Hispanics have to rely on fraud to flex political muscle. They don't. This is a young population, and its influence over the political process will be felt for many generations to come just by relying on eligible voters. Still, it's undeniable that much of the modern-day concern over voter fraud (“surging Hispanic political power”) is tied to the larger anxiety that many Americans feel about changing demographics and how illegal immigration plays into that.

I asked Iglesias if he thought this issue was really about the GOP trying to suppress the Hispanic vote.

“I think it's a little more nuanced than that,” he told me last week in an interview. “I think the concern wasn't just that Hispanics were voting but illegal immigrants in this country, who have no legal right to vote, were voting.”

Are there people who really believe this? To think that illegal immigrants would hand over their savings to smugglers, trek across the desert, settle into an underground economy, and then suddenly get the urge to risk it all by rushing out to vote. We can't even get sufficient numbers of American citizens to vote, and they don't have to invest anything more than a lunch hour.

Iglesias doesn't buy that scenario either.

“Most illegal immigrants aren't going to put themselves in a dangerous predicament in which they could be rounded up or photographed or harassed,” he said. “They just want to do their work and stay in the shadows.”

So, obviously, Iglesias doesn't think this is the epidemic that it is advertised to be by immigration restrictionists and nativists.

“I'm a little bit suspicious of the theory that there are a persuasive and large number of illegal immigrants who are voting,” he acknowledged. “Have some voted in the past? I'm sure some have. But is it large enough to skew an election? I don't think so.”

While he was still in office, Iglesias set up a bipartisan task force and hot line to investigate allegations of voting improprieties. But few of the tips had any merit. And in none of those cases, Iglesias said, did he and his prosecutors think they could prove what the statute requires: that the intent of the alleged fraud was to influence an election and not simply to profit by registering voters who aren't eligible.

When Iglesias decided he didn't have the evidence to go after fraudulent voting, Republicans in New Mexico decided they had more than enough evidence to go after him.

I can't help but wonder if the suspicion that Iglesias was soft on voter fraud (“surging Hispanic political power”) had something to do with, oh, say, the fact that he is Hispanic. I asked him if he ever felt he was being held to a different standard and if he thought that – if his name were Smith – he would still have been harassed.

Iglesias pondered the question for a few seconds. Then he acknowledged with a detectable sadness, “There may be something to your theory.”

Let's hope not.

Navarrette can be reached via e-mail at ruben.navarrette@uniontrib.com.

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