President Donald Trump told a prime-time national audience, last week, that the Department of Homeland Security found 278,000 noncitizens on state voter rolls after checking roughly half the states.
“It’s a number,” as my old boss says.
The Washington Post called it “an exaggerated claim that noncitizens are registering to vote en masse.” No, noncitizens are not really registering to vote so much as being registered — without their knowledge or understanding through deliberate government policy that pretends it’s pro-democracy to throw folks on the voter list who are not legally entitled to vote.
Not that there aren’t cases of fraud. There are. But I trust the good intentions of the average non-citizen more than the intentions of the politicians in states regularly facilitating their voter registrations.
Which, incidentally, can undermine an immigrant’s ability to gain U.S. citizenship.
Fully 250,000 of that aforementioned total were found in just four states: California, Nevada, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The other roughly 28,000 noncitizens were discovered on the rolls in “two dozen or so states” by running those voter files against the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database.
Of course, some of these 278,000 identified will likely turn out to be citizens. Some will turn out to be pets. Data is sometimes incorrect. Mistakes happen. But let’s find out.
In a sensible country, every state would (1) check its voter file against the federal SAVE database (and other data at DHS and the State Department), (2) institute a sensible, respectful and lawful process to check with voters so identified to clarify the facts, and then, (3) follow the law to remove each illegal registrant.
Instead of merely arguing about the extent and severity of the problem, why not just solve it?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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