Thread: Did Ballot-Harvesting By Illegals Flip Elections To Democrats?

Did Ballot-Harvesting By Illegals Flip Elections To Democrats?

Voter Fraud: Democrats say they oppose President Trump's demand for money to start building a border wall on moral grounds. More likely it's because they know that unchecked immigration — legal or illegal — helps them win elections. If you don't think so, look at what happened in California in the midterms.

A recent Los Angeles Times article — titled "How young immigrant 'Dreamers' made flipping control of the House a personal quest" — talked about how those who came to the country illegally as children had been running around California helping otherwise nonvoters fill out ballots.

Ballot-Harvesting By 'Dreamers'

It's a practice called ballot-harvesting, and it's illegal in many states. Former Gov. Jerry Brown legalized the practice in California in 2016. Remember, these so-called Dreamers are technically in the U.S. illegally.

"This pretty well amounts to foreign nationals voting, without any fear of prosecution," noted Monica Showalter, who has been following this story at American Thinker.

Partially because of such efforts, turnout among Hispanics shot up 94%, in the 2018 midterms, compared with the 2014 midterms, in eight states analyzed by the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative at UCLA. Among non-Hispanics in those states, turnout was up only 37%.
The surge, the report says, helped move 20 House districts held by Republicans to Democratic.

"What it means," Showalter goes on, "is that the House has been flipped in no small part by foreigners, who … may have cast dozens and dozens of ballots, all from the advantages of ballot-harvesting."

Ballot-Harvesting In Orange County

According to the San Diego Tribune, Fred Whitaker, the chairman of the Republican Party in Orange County, told supporters that GOP losses in the county were the "direct result of ballot harvesting allowed under California law for the first time."

It gets worse from there. In California, at least, it's possible that at least some of the ballots harvested by Dreamers were from people who were themselves ineligible to vote.
That's in part because for decades California wasn't clearing out its voter database of inactive voters.

In fact, it took a lawsuit by Judicial Watch to get the state and Los Angeles County to start removing 1.5 million inactive names from the registration list that could be invalid, as required by the National Voter Registration Act.

Judicial Watch found that the state has more registered voters than it does possible voters. Los Angeles County, it found, "has a registration rate of 112% of its adult citizen population."

Forcing California to purge its registration list of deadbeat voters will, Judicial Watch says, "help ensure cleaner elections."

Did Non-Citizens Vote?

Meanwhile, an investigation by the Sacramento Bee found that California officials "still can't say whether noncitizens voted in the June 2018 primary because a confusing government questionnaire about eligibility was created in a way that prevents a direct answer on citizenship."

The Bee found that after the state's Department of Motor Vehicles started automatically registering people to vote last April, it "acknowledged making 105,000 processing errors out of more than 2.4 million transactions. At least one noncitizen has come forward to say he was improperly added to the voter rolls."

Those errors, however, don't count people who improperly claimed they were eligible to vote. The DMV told the Bee that "it is not responsible for verification of voter eligibility."

The Secretary of State insists that, while he can't say if noncitizens voted in the June primary, he's certain none did in the general midterm elections. (Why anyone should have confidence in that claim is a mystery.)

Is it any wonder that Democrats are now refusing to support even the rudimentary step of securing the southern border? As California has shown, an army of noncitizens can help sway elections. And keeping the border open will only bring in more.

https://www.investors.com/politics/e...erm-elections/

January 2, 2019


DREAMers tell of going ballot-harvesting in California to flip the House blue

By Monica Showalter


It was one of those tug-on-the-heartstrings, tear-jerking, carefully curated narratives about DREAMers we're supposed to read and respond to with sympathy.

But a story that ran in the Los Angeles Times yesterday accidentally did more to raise questions about the issue of ballot-harvesting in California than any raving right-wing tome could ever do.

The Times describes how California's famed ballot-harvesters, who flipped places such as Orange County blue by "helping" fill out, turn in, and continue to turn in ballots from otherwise uncommitted voters until they got the result they wanted, aren't actually U.S. citizens. Here are the DREAMers in action, "helping" the voters to vote the way they wanted:

In California, Dreamers like Cruz phoned voters, walked precincts and protested outside Republican lawmakers' offices, reaching people who had not been called or visited by either party. Their efforts helped boost turnout among Latinos in this year's midterm election – 29 million nationwide were eligible to vote, according to the Pew Research Center – which is projected to surpass levels higher than in past presidential election years, political analysts said.

An analysis of data from eight states by the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative at UCLA found the Latino vote grew by an estimated 96% from 2014 to 2018, compared with 37% among non-Latinos. The surge, researchers said, helped move 20 House districts held by Republicans to Democratic control in California, Arizona, Nevada, Texas, New Mexico, Florida, New Jersey and New York.

Here's how they actually did it:

Half an hour later, she was helping Silva look up candidates as he filled out his ballot by the light of her phone. "I'm glad you guys came," he said. "I was going to leave it in my drawer."

The story doesn't say what the DREAMer/ballot-harvester would do if the voter decided to vote some other way from the way she wanted him to fill his ballot out. The incurious reporter omitted the obvious question from that heart-tugging scene: Did this foreigner tell the indifferent man how to fill out his ballot? Let's just say the reporter showed a strong interest, based on the rest of her reportage, in protecting the foreigner from any accusation of illegal voting.

But only a fool would think she didn't tell the indifferent man whom to vote for, effectively voting by proxy.

This pretty well amounts to foreign nationals voting, without any fear of prosecution. That changes the nature of the election and, in fact, the U.S. republic itself. Voting up until now has been a practice reserved for citizens. Today, non-citizens vote – by getting hold of indifferent Americans and in a perfectly legal setup in California, filling in the ballots by proxy, with no fingerprints visible. Who knows what kind of coercion may be employed by some of them?

And even more disturbingly, if DREAMers can do that to promote their own political agenda, what's to stop other foreigners, with far more malign agendas, from doing it? Shall a team of Russian or Chinese agents, Arab terrorists, or Mexican cartels, be next to help harvest the ballots? (You know the Chinese are thinking about it.) They're as foreign as DREAMers, and it would be perfectly legal under current California law. Ballot-harvesting, which is illegal in most states, makes this all possible. What's to stop the Chinese from running an agent (as recent CIA busts show, it doesn't need to be a Chinese-American) and then sending their goons and agents to the houses of Chinese-American voters in Chinese-American neighborhoods, to insist that they vote for Beijing's candidate? They'd have the additional pull of being able to warn those voters about repercussions against family back home and don't think they wouldn't dream of using it.

What it means now is that the House has been flipped in no small part by foreigners, who not only cast one ballot, but may have cast dozens and dozens of ballots, all from the advantages of ballot-harvesting.

It sounds as though it's time for a constitutional amendment to end this fiasco should the GOP retake the House in 2020, or we can forget about the integrity of the ballot entirely. Spread the news of this de facto foreign voting far and wide.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog...ouse_blue.html

How young immigrant ‘Dreamers’ made flipping control of the House a personal quest
By JAZMINE ULLOA
JAN 01, 2019 | 12:05 AM


Gabriela Cruz decorates her family's Christmas tree at her home in Santa Cruz. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)


Gabriela Cruz, who was brought to the U.S. illegally when she was 1, couldn’t vote, but in the final hours before the Nov. 6 election, she was making one last run to get people to the polls.

The sun was setting in Modesto when she found Ronald Silva, 41, smoking a cigarette on a tattered old couch behind a group home. He politely tried to wave her off until she reminded him he had a right that she as an immigrant without citizenship didn’t have.

“It could really make a change for us,” said Cruz, 29.

Half an hour later, she was helping Silva look up candidates as he filled out his ballot by the light of her phone. “I’m glad you guys came,” he said. “I was going to leave it in my drawer.”

Young immigrants, known as “Dreamers,” have become a political force over the last two decades as they have pushed Congress to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws. Part of a new wave of immigrant activists who mobilized this year to return control of the House to Democrats, Cruz and others in the movement see in President Trump an existential threat to their futures, and to their friends and family.

Less than a year ago, Cruz had a steady job at a mortgage bank, with health benefits and a retirement plan. She wanted to go back to college and dreamed of buying her own house.

But when Trump instituted a travel ban, tightened immigration enforcement and tried to end a program that granted temporary protections for young people brought into the country illegally as children, she grew tired of sitting helplessly at her desk and quit to become an activist.

“I realized I needed to share my story with as many people as possible,” she said. “We shouldn’t be living in a world of fear because we are undocumented.”

In California, Dreamers like Cruz phoned voters, walked precincts and protested outside Republican lawmakers’ offices, reaching people who had not been called or visited by either party. Their efforts helped boost turnout among Latinos in this year’s midterm election — 29 million nationwide were eligible to vote, according to the Pew Research Center — which is projected to surpass levels higher than in past presidential election years, political analysts said.

An analysis of data from eight states by the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative at UCLA found the Latino vote grew by an estimated 96% from 2014 to 2018, compared with 37% among non-Latinos. The surge, researchers said, helped move 20 House districts held by Republicans to Democratic control in California, Arizona, Nevada, Texas, New Mexico, Florida, New Jersey and New York.

In another study, the political research firm Latino Decisions found that an increase in Latino voter turnout contributed to flipping six GOP-held congressional seats in California — four in the once conservative bastion of Orange County and two in the Central Valley that have long eluded Democrats.

The results “spoke to the power within the Latino community,” said Adrian Pantoja, a senior analyst with Latino Decisions and a professor of politics at Pitzer College.

“Latinos were talking to each other, and there’s no doubt that Dreamers were instrumental to the effort,” he said.



Gabriela Cruz, right, and her mother, Irma Cruz, make tamales at their home in Santa Cruz. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)


It was Cruz’s grandmother who brought her family to California nearly 30 years ago. Manuela Cruz made her way to Santa Cruz from the Mexican state of Oaxaca in search of one of her sons, a surfer who, after a stint in prison, became a youth mentor in the city nestled on the cliffs of Monterey Bay.

Gabriela Cruz was only a baby when her mother, then 21 and pregnant with her sister, carried her across the border illegally to join them. They arrived in Beach Flats, at the time an immigrant neighborhood not yet crowded with condos, where Gabriela learned English and played with her little sisters near the wharf and an old amusement park.

Her grandmother sold plates of food from her home and her mother, Irma Cruz, packaged dried pineapples and became a cook at a cafe. They kept their immigration status a secret, wrestling with it each time Gabriela asked to go to Disneyland or needed to see a doctor.

“I didn’t want to tell [Gabriela] and affect the person she could become,” Irma Cruz said.

By eighth grade, there was no avoiding it. Gabriela begged to go on a class trip to Washington, D.C. She wanted to see the nation’s capital and wander through the halls of power. But her mother objected, making excuses.

Airplanes are dangerous. There’s too much crime in the city.

And finally: “You weren’t born here.”

Gabriela struggled to bury her resentment.

The subtle differences she detected in how she had been treated suddenly made sense, she said. She didn’t have a regular dentist like her sisters. Her mother always seemed to make more rules for her. And her future seemed limited: She wouldn’t be able to go to college or get a driver’s license, much less find a job.

“I felt like when I was in school, I could pretend to be like everybody else,” Cruz said. “But as soon as I became an adult, it was going to be even more apparent that I did not have citizenship.”


Gabriela Cruz holds a photo of herself and her mother at her kindergarten graduation from a Santa Cruz public school. (Jazmine Ulloa / Los Angeles Times)

More than 16 years ago, Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Downey) helped introduce legislationto pave a path to citizenship for thousands of immigrants who, like Cruz, were brought into the country illegally as children. Young immigrant activists have been fighting for what became the Dream Act ever since, even as the federal proposal and broader immigration reform failed four times in Congress, starting in 2007.

Their plight has resonated in California, where some state leaders fought against 1994’s Proposition 187, which sought to cut off schooling and health services for immigrants here illegally. Under Gov. Jerry Brown, the state became the first to approve its own version of the Dream Act in 2011, and now provides financial aid and in-state tuition for students without legal status.

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, an Obama-era effort, came a year later and provided protections to some 800,000 young immigrants in the U.S. illegally — roughly a quarter of whom lived in California — if they didn’t have a criminal record and worked or went to school.

While other young immigrants organized, Cruz was afraid to speak to anyone about her status. But the seeds of her political education were quietly being planted, she said. The state’s efforts helped her afford college, and six years ago DACA enabled her to quit two jobs waiting tables to work at a credit union. After a painful divorce from her high school boyfriend, she treasured the independence, she said.

But Irma Cruz was initially nervous for her daughter. Would DACA truly protect her?

Gabriela Cruz compiled her application against her mother’s advice, stuffing a manila folder with school transcripts, photos and addresses, evidence of a life almost entirely lived in the United States.

“‘Right now, you basically don’t exist in this country,’” Cruz recalls her mother warning. “‘You’re going to expose yourself to the U.S. government and you don’t know how this information can be used against you.’”


Gabriela Cruz walks Ronald Silva, 41, through his ballot, helping him look up candidates and propositions, hours before the polls closed on Nov. 6. (Jazmine Ulloa / Los Angeles Times)


After Trump was elected on promises to increase deportations and build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, Cruz worried her mother’s worst fears might materialize. So she took her dream vacation to Maui with a boyfriend — her first time on a plane — not knowing her fate in the country or whether she would get to travel again. Trump rescinded DACA months later.

That day, her eyes swollen from crying, she walked to a protest a few blocks from the Santa Cruz bank where she worked. Cruz said she felt stares as she crossed the street, and realized she might be the only Dreamer in the crowd of roughly 40 people. Someone handed her a microphone.

She didn’t want to speak, but she thought the least she could do was thank the group for making her feel loved, she said.

“I told them, ‘I am not a bad person, I had no say in coming here,’” she said.

It was the first time she shared her story aloud. But she still felt alone.

So she called United We Dream, a Washington-based immigrant rights organization founded by Dreamers, to start her own local group. Soon after, she quit her job and made her way to Republican members’ offices after Congress again failed to pass the Dream Act. Over the summer, she and other activists traveled to Texas, where she said she saw herself in the migrant children who were bused into a tent city in Tornillo. There, federal immigration officials were separating migrant families at the border.

And as the midterm election neared, she was among 7,000 Dreamers who made calls, texted and knocked on doors to reach voters in California, New Mexico, Texas and Florida. The effort was the first by United We Dream to target congressional races, but volunteers said they were able to tap into a network of elected officials and activists who had come of age and risen through previous immigrant rights movements.
Perhaps nowhere was that network more established than in California, where Democratic state leaders introduced measures to oppose Trump administration policies and Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra, himself the son of immigrants, led a lawsuit against the federal government over the termination of DACA that temporarily allowed the program to continue.

Yet even in a state billed as a counterweight to Trump, Cruz said she experienced hate. At a demonstration outside the Modesto office of Republican Rep. Jeff Denham, a handful of counter-protesters shouted racial slurs, she said.

Three weeks before election day, she returned to the city, where by then Denham and Democrat Josh Harder were locked in one of the most closely contested races in the state. In a district with historically low Latino turnout, the Turlock congressman had pledged support for the Dream Act and angered his party’s leadership in an unsuccessful attempt to salvage some form of DACA.

But Cruz urged residents to oppose him, pointing to his votes to expand the border wall, make significant cuts to legal immigration and penalize so-called sanctuary cities, which limit collaboration with federal immigration agencies.

In Modesto days before the election, she told voters, “Jeff Denham has had eight years to do something in our favor, and he has done nothing but rubber-stamp things.”



Gabriela Cruz, center, sings during a posada she helped organize at an apartment complex in Santa Cruz. Cruz's immigrant grandmother first started the posadas here, but came to a halt when her grandmother moved away. Now Gaby Cruz is working to revive them. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)


Pollsters and political analysts attribute the midterm victories to a variety of reasons: efficient organizing, a rejection of Trump and concerns over taxes and healthcare. Republicans have criticized groups such as United We Dream for sending volunteers into districts where they don’t live and targeting moderates. But young immigrants activists see the victories as proof that Americans are weary of anti-immigrant rhetoric.

“People would say, ‘You’re going after Jeff Denham — but he is a good bridge between both sides of the aisle on this issue,’” United We Dream campaign manager Adrian Reyna said. “And we said, ‘Great, show me the receipt.’”

As the conversation turns to sustaining momentum through the next presidential election, hundreds of thousands of young people like Cruz remain in deportation limbo. For many, DACA protections are set to expire by 2020 if Congress does not pass a more permanent solution. For countless others, they’ve already expired. Some never had the chance to apply at all.

Irma Cruz says she is proud of her daughter for all she has accomplished, but the two still debate about how much Gabriela is putting herself out there. Some friends praise her. Others wish she would keep quiet.

She hopes to remain an activist, is looking for work with an immigrant rights’ organization and plans to help campaign again in 2020.

“Someone fought for me when I didn’t know they were fighting for me,” she said.

Last month, with help from other activists, she revived the Santa Cruz posadas, a series of processions retracing Mary and Joseph's biblical search for lodging in Bethlehem. As rain poured down, Cruz and others held candles as they walked and sang door to door. The holiday tradition had once been organized by her grandmother, started when she came looking for her son all those years ago.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-...101-story.html

Hispanic is not a "race". It is time for these people that have come here illegally to live off the fat of the land to stop claiming racism to get that to which they are not entitled. IMO

DREAMERS need to go home and vote in their countries.

Let work permits expire and out they go!

No path to stay. They are here illegally whether they came here 30 years ago or 30 seconds ago.

Terminate Obama's unlawful DACA and stop rewarding criminal trespassing illegal aliens.

In my opinion, these illegals are violating my 15th amendment rights by nullifying citizen's votes with votes from foreign nationals.

​

• U.S. Constitution › 15th Amendment

15th Amendment

Amendment XV

Section 1.

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Section 2.

The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Oh absolutely. They are young, idealistic, easily activated. Liberals have turned this into a religious crusade---ballot harvesting is just one of the rites.

Around here there were illegals putting signs up and canvassing neighborhoods to get regular voters to vote against an immigration control ballot measure. In one county we have illegals who have formed a task force to tell local police how to do their jobs. They are active on every front, coaxed by their anti American handlers. They have the time and willingness to do it. Meanwhile fatcat GOP Congressmen retire from office leaving their positions wide open to Democrat takeover.

While vote harvesting by illegal DACA dreamers is certainly worrisome, it is the millions of anchor babies voting legally who will make this country a one party country. Ending birthright citizenship is the only hope.

GOP aims to ‘harvest’ ballots as well in 2020

Worker details alleged ballot fraud in North Carolina election board hearing