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Are illegals voting in U.S. elections?
A study released Oct. 7 by a former executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies claims that American elections are potentially being affected by voters who are not American citizens.The study, "How Many Non-Citizen Voters; The Impact of Non-Citizen Voting on American Elections," was conducted by David Simcox. It claims that there may be as many as 2.3 million "ineligible aliens" on U.S. voting rolls who are voting for candidates and issues sympathetic to their situations.
The study asserts that the non-citizen voters exist in many states because verification of voter registration applicants is nonexistent.
In a number of states, including Virginia, applicants are asked to check a box on a voter registration application form asking if the applicant is a U.S. citizen, but the information is not verified.
"Unless we have received something to contradict the statement, the statement is taken as given," said Fairfax County Deputy Registrar Gary Scott.
According to Scott, the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles will contact the State Board of Elections if someone willingly discloses that they are not a U.S. citizen while applying for a driver's license, but otherwise there is no routine communication between the two departments on the issue.
"The DMV doesn't tell us anything," concurred Dianna Price, secretary for the Loudoun County Electoral Board.
"People assume that all this information is shared and that all these agencies talk to each other, but they don't," she said.
According to the study, one increasing indicator of non-citizen voters in the American voting population is the number of persons selected for jury duty who are dismissed because they are not American citizens.
The study claims that by comparing a jurisdiction's eligible voting population with its number of registered voters, discrepancies may appear.
It also cites the Government Accountability Office as noting that it is presently difficult for many states to identify duplicate registrations in other states.
Kali Schumitz, a Fairfax County Times employee, moved from her parents' residence in Chantilly to a new residence in Maryland two years ago but received a Virginia voter registration card at the Virginia address last month. She also received a Maryland card at her new address. "If I were dishonest, I guess I could vote in both states," she said.
"Maryland should have contacted the State Board of Elections when she registered there," said Scott. "Some states are very good at doing this and some states are not."
Scott told The Times that about 80,000 Virginia voter registration cards that were sent out in August were returned unopened.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2007 American Community Survey, there are 286,000 foreign-born residents in Fairfax County and 56,000 in Loudoun County.
While there is no firm number of how many illegal aliens reside in Fairfax and Loudoun counties or how many may be fraudulently registered to vote, the study points out that in the 2004 Virginia Senate race, Democrat Jim Webb beat Republican George Allen by just over 7,000 votes. The study estimates that 42,000 of the votes in that particular election were cast by non-citizen voters.
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