Study Claims Large Numbers of Non-Citizens Vote in U.S.

by Jim Geraghty

This study’s claim is pretty eye-opening… 

 

Our data comes from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES). Its large number of observations (32,800 in 2008 and 55,400 in 2010) provide sufficient samples of the non-immigrant sub-population, with 339 non-citizen respondents in 2008 and 489 in 2010.

 

For the 2008 CCES, we also attempted to match respondents to voter files so that we could verify whether they actually voted. How many non-citizens participate in U.S. elections?

 

More than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples indicated that they were registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-citizens voted. Our best guess, based upon extrapolations from the portion of the sample with a verified vote, is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010. (Note that they keep using the term, “non-citizen,” without specifying whether they mean immigrants who have entered the country illegally or immigrants who are in the process of legally becoming citizens — lawful permanent residents, a.k.a. “green card” holders, or both.

 

It’s a crime either way, but it’s easier to imagine a lawful permanent resident mistakenly thinking they have already earned the right to vote.) If they mean 6.4 percent of 11 million illegal immigrants… we’re talking about roughly 700,000 votes being cast by non-citizens in 2008. Stunning. If true, it refutes my earlier contention that proven cases of voter fraud would only swing elections in races that come down to a few hundred votes.

 

 But this section is fascinating: We also find that one of the favorite policies advocated by conservatives to prevent voter fraud appears strikingly ineffective. Nearly three quarters of the non-citizens who indicated they were asked to provide photo identification at the polls claimed to have subsequently voted. Is it really that a significant number of illegal immigrants now have a fake photo ID that looks realistic enough to fool voter registration and ballot box authorities? If that’s the case, it’s not really accurate to call them “undocumented immigrants,” now is it? More like “forged document immigrants.” Or is it that the poll workers manning the polling places that day aren’t really bothering to examine the IDs shown to them?

 

 Keep in mind, people’s memories could be faulty. And we’re not dealing with a ton of examples from these interviews: Of the 27 non-citizens who indicated that they were “asked to show picture identification, such as a driver’s license, at the polling place or election office,” in the 2008 survey, 18 claimed to have subsequently voted, and one more indicated that they were “allowed to vote using a pro- visional ballot.” Only 7 (25.9%) indicated that they were not allowed to vote after showing identification.