AP Tries to Explain Why Noncitizen Voting is No Big Deal

With more than ten million “new arrivals” in the country under Joe Biden’s watch, increasing numbers of people have been expressing concerns over how many of them might wind up trying to vote in the upcoming elections. Even worse, how many of them might get away with it? This is a threat that has been brought up by Donald Trump recently, to the great alarm of his detractors in the legacy media. But he was hardly the first to raise this specter. Rushing to the rescue this weekend is the Associated Press. They want to assure everyone that Donald Trump is just engaging in conspiracy theories again. Noncitizen voting simply doesn’t happen, or at least not enough that it should bother you. Our voting system is safe and secure. You know… just like our border. 

The theory involves two complicated subjects, immigration and voting, but it’s actually very simple. There isn’t any indication that noncitizens vote in significant numbers in federal elections or that they will in the future. It’s already a crime for them to do so. And we know it’s not a danger because various states have examined their rolls and found very few noncitizen voters.

To be clear, there have been cases of noncitizens casting ballots, but they are extremely rare. Those who have looked into these cases say they often involve legal immigrants who mistakenly believe they have the right to vote.

Johnson tried to address this, saying that “we cannot wait for widespread fraud to occur.” But one prior crackdown on purported noncitizen voting also risked striking thousands of actual citizens from the voting rolls.

To their credit, the AP is very careful in choosing the language used to bat these concerns away. That pattern continues throughout the entire article. It’s worth a moment to take a look at some of their defenses and complaints. For example, notice how they choose to say that there isn’t, “any indication that noncitizens vote in significant numbers in federal elections…”

They don’t even suggest that there haven’t been cases of noncitizens voting. They’re simply saying that it doesn’t happen in significant numbers. So what are those numbers and who is the arbiter of how many would be “significant?” We have no idea what the number is and it is apparently the AP style guide that will determine whether or not it’s significant. Many of us could plausibly make the argument that even one noncitizen voting illegally is too many. 

The AP is also careful to specify “… in federal elections.” That’s because some blue states and sanctuary cities are already changing the laws to allow them to vote in local and municipal races. But they would never try to stretch their reach a bit and cast a vote in the national races, right? Perish the thought. And in the “rare” cases where it does happen, they offer a handy excuse, saying that it was a legal immigrant who mistakenly thought they were allowed to vote. See? It’s just an innocent misunderstanding.

Later in the article, the AP goes on to complain about primarily GOP-led efforts to clean up the voting rolls and root out ineligible (or dead) voters. This, they argue, is a dangerous and probably prejudiced topic that could result in legitimate voters being removed from the rolls. But in reality, even if that does happen, good communication and appropriate timing should allow all legitimate voters to ensure they remain on the rolls. Even if they are somehow “lost” in the process, they can cast a provisional ballot on election day. 

Nothing in the AP article even begins to address the question of how Democrats want to count all of the “new arrivals” in the census. Whether they are voting or not, this can’t be allowed. That throws off the allocation of representatives and electoral votes. It’s another form of election fraud and interference. Representatives are supposed to go to Washington to represent the people who sent them. That means those who voted for them as well as those who voted against them. People in our country illegally are not supposed to be voting for anyone so they did not “send them to Washington.”

I will agree that the number of illegal aliens voting in federal elections was, in reality, probably quite low as recently as twenty years ago. While any non-zero number should be unacceptable, they likely didn’t add up to a large enough number to swing a local dog-chaser election. But we had a lot fewer illegal migrants back then. We now have more than ten million more of them thanks to Joe Biden. If even one-tenth of one percent of them voted or at least tried to vote, that’s still a mountain of votes to account for. The Associated Press can try to blow smoke up our collective skirts all they like, but this is a situation that requires investigation and whatever corrective action may be possible.