July 10, 2008 4:00 AM

Illegal Voting

The non-citizen electorate.

By Hans A. von Spakovsky

[b]Amid all the talk of new voters becoming involved in the election, hopefully one group of voters will not vote in November — non-citizens, many of whom are illegally registered to vote all over the country, particularly in the southwest. Although there is no reliable method to determine the exact number registered aliens, there is evidence that this is a significant and growing problem.

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. citizensâ€