Bill Clinton's call for mass voter fraud should be condemned
Illegal aliens have never had more incentives and ability to vote in our elections as they do this cycle. After being told by the globalist elite they’re illegal entry into the country is without consequence, helps rather than hinders American workers, and unites the national culture, any existing moral qualms of further violating the law, such as by voting, have been thoroughly scrubbed away. Former president Bill Clinton all but ensured this in his speech at the DNC Convention last week.
Speaking directly to illegal aliens, Clinton stated to an applauding audience of delegates that “if you love this country, you’re working hard, you’re paying taxes and you’re obeying the law and you’d like to become a citizen, you should choose immigration reform over somebody that wants to send you back.” Unfortunately for Bill, illegal aliens (and non-citizens in general) aren’t supposed to be ‘choosing’ anyone. Like in every other country in the world, here in America only citizens are supposed to vote.
Despite its unprecedented foreign-born population (currently over 40 million), the US protects against illegal voter-registration by relying on an attestation system. Under federal law, provided one can show a driver’s license or social security number, all a non-citizen need to do if they really want to vote is check a box “confirming” they’re an eligible voter. In other words, it’s an honor system. This isn’t common in other arguably less important areas. Under legislation (oddly enough) signed by Bill Clinton, protective measures were put in place to ensure illegal aliens couldn’t apply for federal benefits. Rather than putting trust in the applicants themselves, the so-called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program was installed to help federal agencies confirm the immigration-status of all benefit-seeking applicants (illegal aliens, who by definition have no immigration records, cannot be identified on the system and are therefore blocked from receiving benefits). Despite the fact that an illegal vote casted is a citizen-vote cancelled, similar defensive measures are apparently not seen as warranted in the area of voting.
On both the state and federal levels, incentives for illegal alien-voting abound. State bills offering in-state tuition, driver’s and professional licenses, illegal alien-“sanctuary”, etc. are currently being debated in various parts of the country. For those illegal aliens who fall within President Obama’s blanket grants of deferred action (2 million for the renewable 2012 DACA program and 5 million for the currently frozen DAPA program), their incentives are obvious. With regards to DACA-recipients, they also have a newfound ability to register and vote due to their eligibility for federal identification documents, including driver’s licenses and SSNs. According to the Social Security Administration (SSA), as of FY2014, 541,000 DACA-recipients had been allotted SSNs. Immediately after the 2014 DAPA amnesty was announced, Sen. Rob Portman of the swing-state of Ohio sent a letter to the president chastising his action for “afford[ing] potentially thousands of non-citizens in Ohio the opportunity to willfully or negligently register to vote and to vote” and for making voter protection in his state “significantly more difficult.”
Besides DAPA and DACA-beneficiaries, other non-citizens have the ability to vote due to their access to ID documents. Recipients of the deferred action program Temporary Protected Status (a population of 300,000) are eligible to receive SSNs. Meanwhile, amongst illegal aliens in general, the use of fake or stolen SSNs is commonplace. The SSA has estimated that 75 percent of all illegal aliens use either fake numbers or legitimate numbers stolen from legal residents—And yet numerous news outlets continue to use the phrase “undocumented immigrant.” This is why border states, like Arizona, suffer by far the highest rates of identity theft in the country.
The record-close election between Al Gore and George W. Bush led to the formation of a federal commission directed by former president Jimmy Carter to study voter reforms. Notably, its final report stated that better identification requirements were essential because, first, “[i]n close or disputed elections…a small amount of fraud could make the margin of difference… [a]nd second, the perception of possible fraud contributes to low confidence in the system.”
In this current election, where American confidence in general and the integrity of our laws has taken center stage, comments like Bill Clinton’s show exactly why the public’s so angry and frustrated. Whether disdaining democratically-enacted laws, such as our voting or immigration laws, is a shrewd or foolhardy campaign strategy, we shall see.
Smith is an investigative associate with the Immigration Reform Law Institute.
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