Over the past few weeks, we’ve written frequently about allegations of voter fraud from around the country. The key swing state of Virginia, in particular, seems to be a hotbed of potential corruption as evidenced by the actions of 19 year old “Young Virginia Democrat”, Andrew Spieles, who allegedly acted alone to re-register a bunch of dead voters in his home state (see our post here). Then there were the efforts of Virginia’s governor, and long-time Clinton confidant, Terry McAuliffe to register 200,000 felons to vote.
But Virginia, isn’t the only state with questionable voter registration practices. Fraudulent voter registrations have been uncovered in Colorado, where dead people were found to be voting multiple years after their death, and in Washington where the Turkish-born, non-citizen who killed five people at the Cascade Mall massacre has apparently been voting for years.
Now, the latest voter registration fraud comes from the “City of Brotherly Love” where, according to LifeZette, an investigation by Joseph Vanderhulst, an attorney with the Public Interest Legal Foundation, revealed that 86 “non-citizens” have been registered to vote in Phildelphia for years with half of them casting ballots in at least 1 election. What’s worse, the only reason Philadelphia election officials were even able to identify the “non-citizen” voters was because they had self-reported that they were erroneously registered to vote after a trip to the DMV to get a drivers license. According to Vanderhulst’s investigation, the DMV “errs on the side of registering voters” if there are any discrepancies on their forms.
Vanderhulst said city officials indicated they err on the side of registering voters.
“If the checked [citizenship] boxes are blank, they still register them,” he said. “That’s how these people are getting on the rolls … It’s just too easy. Maybe it’s supposed to be easy — but the price of that seems to be no discretion on the front end.”
Of the fraudulently registered voters in Philly, 59 were registered as Democrats while 21 had no party affiliation and only 6 were registered as Republicans…which we suspect will come as a surprise to almost no one. But apparently this isn’t a new phenomenon in Philadelphia. Vanderhulst’s investigation found that dozens of illegally registered voters are discovered each year and many of them have participated in multiple election cycles.
- The city canceled 23 registered voters in 2015. Of that group, seven voted in past elections, and three had been registered for more than a decade.
- The city canceled 30 registered voters in 2014. Of that group, 18 had voted in past elections, and eight had been registered for at least a decade.
- The city canceled 33 registered voters in 2013. Of that group, 15 had voted in past elections, and six had been registered for at least a decade.
Of course, none of these recent cases of voter fraud had any impact on a U.S. appeals court that recently denied efforts by Kansas, Alabama and Georgia to add a proof-of-citizenship requirement to federal voter registration forms. Among other things, the court cited “‘precious little’ evidence of voter fraud by noncitizens.” Per the Washington Post:
A U.S. appeals court panel that barred Kansas, Alabama and Georgia from adding a proof-of-citizenship requirement to a federal voter registration form wrote Monday that federal law leaves it to a federal elections agency — not the states — to determine whether such a change is necessary.
The panel wrote that although the document requirement “unquestionably” hinders voter registration groups ahead of the November elections, there was “precious little” evidence of voter fraud by noncitizens, the problem the states said the measure is intended to fight.
“Permitting the states to dictate the contents of the Federal Form would undermine” its role as a ‘backstop, the two-judge majority wrote. “The Commission, not the states, determines necessity.”
Which begs the question, exactly how much evidence of illegal voting is officially required before states will be allowed to implement common sense rules to prevent fraud?
via http://ift.tt/2d7klRX Tyler Durden