A Sure Path To Voter Fraud

In their efforts to make it easier for citizens of the US register to vote, Democrats pushed hard for so-called motor-voter legislation. All someone needed was a valid drivers license in order to register to vote. The idea was that if it was easier to register to vote that more people would vote. It appears that they were right.

But there's a hitch. If some of the Democrats get their way, illegal immigrants will be able to get valid drivers licenses. That means under the provisions of the motor-voter law they would also be able to vote.

Sen. Hillary Clinton was asked during a debate this week if she supported New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's plan to give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. At first she seemed to endorse the idea, then claimed, "I did not say that it should be done, but I certainly recognize why Governor Spitzer is trying to do it."

The next day she took a firmer stand (sort of) by offering general support for Gov. Spitzer's approach, but adding that she hadn't studied his specific plan. She should, and so should the rest of us. It stops just short of being an engraved invitation for people to commit voter fraud.

The background here is the National Voter Registration Act, commonly known as "Motor Voter," that President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1993. It required all states to offer voter registration to anyone getting a driver's license. One simply fills out a form and checks a box stating he is a citizen; he is then registered and in most states does not have to show any ID to vote.

But no one checks if the person registering to vote is indeed a citizen. That greatly concerns New York election officials, who processed 245,000 voter registrations at DMV offices last year. "It would be [tough to catch] if someone wanted to . . . get a number of people registered who aren't citizens and went ahead and got them drivers' licenses," says Lee Daghlian, spokesman for New York's Board of Elections. Assemblywoman Ginny Fields, a Long Island Democrat, warns that the state's "Board of Elections has no voter police" and that the state probably has upwards of 500,000 illegal immigrants old enough to drive.

Is this what they've been planning all along? Massive voter fraud in an effort to ensure that Democrats will always be the majority at local, state, and national level? They seem to be the ones supporting the push to allow illegal immigrants to get drivers licenses. It's a push to abrogate long standing immigration laws by legitimizing people here in the US illegally. The fact that they are here shows that they already hold our laws in contempt. What's one more bit of illegal activity like voter fraud after that?

Why do I imply that it will be Democrats that will benefit from such voter fraud? If memory serves correctly (and I make no claim to infallible memory), it's been Democrats that have apparently benefited most from voter fraud over the years. Despite accusations that it is Republicans that are the only ones capable of committing this kind of fraud (made mostly be Democrats with an ax to grind), the truth is that the Democrats have pulled of such frauds in the past. It hasn't been uncommon for Democrats to win elections where a considerable number of voters happened to be dead. Some even voted more than once. (Richard J. Daley, late mayor of Chicago, won more than a few elections during his 20 years in office by being a favorite of the dead.)

But if illegal immigrants are allowed to get drivers licenses, the fraud could take place on an unprecedented level, undermining confidence in our electoral system and giving illegal aliens political power they should not have.

This idea of giving illegal immigrants legal ID is a bad idea, one that I believe to be unconstitutional. States are as bound by the US Constitution as any other governmental entity, and immigration is the purview of the federal government, not the states. This is something that New York governor Eliot Spitzer should understand. He's a lawyer. He's also the former Attorney General of New York, so he's more than familiar with the law when it comes to this issue. Yet he proposes a bonehead move that he should know is a bad idea.

Again, maybe that's all part of the plan.