Dear Senator McCain: Investigate Foreign Influence in U.S. Elections — All Of It - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Dear Senator McCain: Investigate Foreign Influence in U.S. Elections — All Of It
by

Dear Senator McCain.

Go for it. All of it.

Much is being made about alleged interference in U.S. elections by the Russians. You have promised an investigation. But when the subject of “foreign influence” in the elections surfaces, strangely those eager to investigate the Russians suddenly turn silent — or worse, dismissive — when the issue becomes voting by non-American citizens, illegals or anyone else who is not an American citizen.

In fact, when President-elect Trump tweeted the suggestion that he might have won the popular vote if non-citizens had been kept from voting the howls of outrage were immediate.

Let’s be clear. There should be zero “foreign influence” in an American election. Zero. But alas, it is all too apparent that foreign influence in elections is just fine and dandy with the Left — as long as the influence is pushing their candidate.

Here is NRO’s John Fund on the subject in 2014. The title:

Non-Citizens Are Voting

Wrote Fund in part, bold print for emphasis supplied:

A new study by two Old Dominion University professors, based on survey data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, indicated that 6.4 percent of all non-citizens voted illegally in the 2008 presidential election, and 2.2 percent in the 2010 midterms. Given that 80 percent of non-citizens lean Democratic, they cite Al Franken ’s 312-vote win in the 2008 Minnesota U.S. Senate race as one likely tipped by non-citizen voting. As a senator, Franken cast the 60th vote needed to make Obamacare law.…

This month, North Carolina officials found at least 145 illegal aliens, still in the country thanks to the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, registered to vote. Hundreds of other non-citizens may be on the rolls.

A voter-registration card is routinely issued without any identification check, and undocumented workers can use it for many purposes, including obtaining a driver’s license and qualifying for a job. And if a non-citizen has a voter-registration card, there are plenty of campaign operatives who will encourage him or her to vote illegally.…

It’s no wonder that the two Old Dominion professors concluded that non-citizen votes may have been responsible for Obama’s 2008 victory in North Carolina. “Obama won the state by 14,177 votes, so a turnout by 5.1 percent of North Carolina’s adult non-citizens would have provided this victory margin.” The authors’ paper is consistent with other credible reports of non-citizen voting. For example, Colorado’s Republican secretary of state, Scott Gessler, unveiled a study in 2011 showing that almost 5,000 illegal aliens cast votes in the U.S. Senate election in that state in 2010.

In 2005, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that up to 3 percent of the 30,000 people called for jury duty from voter-registration rolls over a two-year period in one of the 94 current U.S. district courts were non-citizens. In 2012, a local NBC station in Fort Myers, Fla., found that at least 100 individuals in one county had been excused from jury duty because they were not citizens but were registered to vote. Hinako Dennett, who is not a citizen, told the station that she voted “every year.” 

A 1996 congressional race in California may have been stolen by non-citizen voting. Democrat Loretta Sanchez won by only 979 votes, and an investigation by the House Committee on Oversight turned up 624 invalid ballots cast by non-citizens who were on federal immigration records, along with 124 improper absentee ballots. The committee found “circumstantial” evidence of 196 additional non-citizen votes that it did not include in its tally. Its investigation could not determine the number of illegal-alien votes that might have been cast: “If there is a significant number of ‘documented aliens’ in INS records and on the Orange County voter registration rolls, how many illegal or undocumented aliens may be registered to vote in Orange County?”

Fund wrote this a full two years ago. After the recent dust-up over Trump’s comments, Fund and ex-Justice Department official Hans von Spakovsky — co-authors of Who’s Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk waded in to headline this in the Wall Street Journal:

Do Illegal Votes Decide Elections?

There’s no way to know. But the evidence suggests that significant numbers of noncitizens cast ballots.

The two wrote this in part, bold print for emphasis:

Donald Trump ’s claim that illegal voting may have cost him a popular-vote majority has touched off outrage. Widespread voter fraud, the media consensus suggests, isn’t possible. But there is a real chance that significant numbers of noncitizens and others are indeed voting illegally, perhaps enough to make up the margin in some elections.

The Justice Department has opposed every effort by states—such as Kansas, Arizona, Alabama and Georgia — to verify the citizenship of those registering to vote. This despite evidence that noncitizens are indeed registering and casting ballots. In 2015 one Kansas county began offering voter registration at naturalization ceremonies. Election officials soon discovered about a dozen new Americans who were already registered—and who had voted as noncitizens in multiple elections.

How common is this? If only we knew. Political correctness has squelched probes of noncitizen voting, so most cases are discovered accidentally instead of through a systematic review of election records.”

In other words? There, as plain as day, is repeated documented evidence of non-citizens voting. Or, in other words, foreign influence being used to affect American elections.

But note well this line in that WSJ story: “The Justice Department has opposed every effort by states — such as Kansas, Arizona, Alabama and Georgia — to verify the citizenship of those registering to vote.”

In other words? In other words, the Obama administration and Democrats are just fine with foreign influence in American elections — as long as the influence in question is a thumb on the voting scale for Democrats. They are so fond of foreigners influencing American elections in their favor that they will go to great lengths to allow it by specifically opposing “every effort by states — such as Kansas, Arizona, Alabama and Georgia — to verify the citizenship of those registering to vote.”

Which brings us back to the subject of Vladimir Putin and allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Senator John McCain has been vocal on the subject of alleged Russian hacking, as Politico notes here.

But respectfully, Senator? Don’t stop there. The American election process is sacred to all Americans. Foreign influence — whether it comes from a Russian strongman or an illegal or other non-citizen living in America and showing up in person to vote unchallenged — is wrong. It is a deliberate, illegal, intentional effort to affect the outcome of an American election.

Don’t let Democrats play games here. Don’t run an “investigation” that is afraid to turn over all the rocks and see just how accurate these charges are.

Foreign influence is foreign influence. Period.

Dig deep.

Jeffrey Lord
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Jeffrey Lord, a contributing editor to The American Spectator, is a former aide to Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp. An author and former CNN commentator, he writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com. His new book, Swamp Wars: Donald Trump and The New American Populism vs. The Old Order, is now out from Bombardier Books.
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