An open invitation to voter fraud and illegal aliens voting. Think that ain't happening? Then I've got a green river in Chicago and a bridge in Brooklyn that you might be interested in purchasing:
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Translators and their related costs least of our ballot box worries
By Chris Bailey
Published: 9/30/2007 5:59 AM

Only a day or two into an out-of-town vacation, one is faced with a moment of stark recognition. Not everyone in the world lives daily under the stress of gang warfare and illegal immigration.

Upon returning home, one is struck immediately with the knowledge that no one miraculously solved those problems while you were gone.

"Another shooting rattles Elgin," and "County needs 50 translators for election" were the headlines that greeted me on my return, tempting me to return to the solitude of the Canadian Rockies, snow or no snow.

Inevitably, it was the translator story that drew the most public response, probably because it engendered so many of the issues that drive the average, rational citizen nuts.

Kane County Clerk Jack Cunningham, who has never met an election he couldn't manage to screw up somehow, failed to get a number polling places opened on time in the November 2006 election, many of them in heavily Hispanic precincts. Enter the U.S. Justice Department.

Ironic that the feds, who've failed so miserably to enforce our borders and immigration laws, should declare the problem wasn't opening the polling doors on time. It was a need for 50 or more Spanish-speaking translators to serve Hispanic voters on Election Day, including the proviso that they can accompany voters into the voting booth.

The howls were nearly instantaneous. Why do Hispanic citizens, who have to show proficiency of some sort in English in order to become citizens, get ballots in Spanish or need translators at all? Why are there only Spanish interpreters when so many other languages are spoken here? Why do Spanish speakers get help inside the booth while the elderly or infirm cannot? Who is going to pay for this?

The ruling served mostly to harden the belief that Spanish-speakers expect special accommodations just for them, be they here legally or illegally. I have no answers to the questions, either, except for the last one. Legal citizens will pay for the accommodations, and they will do so in the face of continuing but hollow arguments that recent immigration has brought huge benefits and little cost.

Maybe it's because I got away from these issues for 10 days, but I honestly think we have bigger issues to worry about at the ballot box. Like whether or not all those who show up to vote, regardless of ethnicity or their land of origin, are actually entitled to do so.

No one has to show any sort of ID proving they are the voter in question unless they are voting early, according to Kane County Director of Elections Linda Mitchell. And there is legislation afoot, she said, to eliminate that ID requirement in early voting. All one need do to vote is to be able to match a signature made during registration, a skill every teenager in trouble at school has mastered for years.

Even worse might be that one need show no proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. One must show proof of current name and residence, but a utility bill and a checkbook will do. And a registrant must check off a box saying he or she is a citizen. If they do not, they are not registered. If they claim to be citizens when they aren't, Mitchell said they are subject to criminal penalties and deportation. But neither is much of a risk. Why? Because if they say they are citizens, Mitchell said she has no authority to check the veracity of that claim. And, she said, she'd have to check every registration application to avoid legal complications, something for which she doesn't have enough manpower even if she had the authority.

Translators in the voting booth? Far, far worse that we can't be sure every voter entering the voting booth is truly entitled to participate in the election process.
http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=47573