http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDA ... e=20060607

Letting Illegals Vote
Posted 6/7/2006

Democracy: The bruising election battle in California's 50th congressional district also made clear that the threat of voter fraud among illegal aliens is all too real and must be stopped.

In California's 50th, liberal Democrat Francine Busby trailed former Rep. Brian Bilbray in polls to fill the seat left vacant by the departure of disgraced former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham. So an increasingly desperate Busby made a last-minute plea to the one constituency she could count on in the solidly Republican district for support: illegal aliens.

At a rally in a suburb of San Diego, one man was caught on tape inquiring in Spanish what someone "without papers" — that is, here illegally — could do to help Busby's campaign.

"You can all help," Busby answered. "Yeah, you don't need papers for voting, you don't need to be a registered voter to help."

Think about that: "You don't need papers for voting." This is a clear inducement to voter fraud, yet it has all but been ignored by the mainstream media. Perhaps worse, it seems to sum up the Democrats' new electoral philosophy, which is: We can't win with American voters, so we'll just have to go get new ones.

Nor was this an isolated event. Indeed, signs of electoral shenanigans between Democrats and illegal immigrants have become increasingly commonplace, especially in California, where an estimated 25% of the nation's 12 million illegals reside.

As far back as 1996, GOP conservative stalwart Bob "B-1 Bob" Dornan lost his seat in Congress to liberal Democrat Loretta Sanchez by a mere 984 votes. Later, California election officials found that "at least" 300 votes were cast by illegals, many of them registered by a group called Hermandad Mexicana Nacional. So it's entirely possible Dornan lost because of illegal votes.

But it's not just California. In 1995, President Clinton, with prodding from Vice President Al Gore, pushed his so-called "Citizenship USA" program. The explicit goal was to naturalize some 1.2 million noncitizens by September of 1996 — just before the presidential election of that year. Thousands of new citizens were added to voter rolls during those months, without the usual scrutiny and background checks that immigrants typically undergo.

Largely in response to such outrages, Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act in 1996. That law made noncitizens who vote in federal or state elections eligible for deportation. It also put enforcement in the hands of the states, and little has been done.

Such laxity has predictable results — including the massive illegal immigrant voting fraud detected in Florida and California during the disputed 2000 presidential vote and, again, in 2004.

How is this possible? Thank Congress for passing 1993's Motor Voter Law, which made it possible for anyone to register to vote with a valid driver's license.

Unfortunately, 14 states don't require proof of citizenship to get a license. And another 17 don't require any identification at all to vote — two massive loopholes in our voting laws that invite fraud and open the possibility for literally millions of illegals to cast ballots.

Underscoring the seriousness of the problem, a Scripps Howard study in 2000 found that 190 counties nationwide and the entire state of Maine had more voters than adults.

Something has gone very, very wrong.

The problem goes well beyond the kind of electoral hijinks that once took place — the kind practiced in the '50s and '60s by the notorious Dick Tuck and in the early '70s by trickster Donald Segretti in the Nixon era. This is nothing short of subversion of the American electoral process, a flagrant crime against the Constitution that should be investigated at once.

It poses a clear and present danger to our democracy, and marks a creeping form of disenfranchisement of U.S. voters and an erosion in our national sovereignty. The 15th Amendment guarantees Americans the right to vote — but only if they're citizens.

There are solutions. One would be to require proof of citizenship to register to vote. Another would be to require polls across the U.S. to check identifications before letting people into the booths.

Either or both would go a long way to protecting Americans' right to vote, a sacred part of our democracy. The only question is whether either party thinks enough of that right to protect it.


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