Since Joe Biden became president in 2021, the state has experienced the worst border crisis in its history, with an estimated 8 to 10 million improper foreign citizens entering the country each day. As hundreds of thousands are offered national benefits, prison, or Social Security numbers for job permits, what are the chances they will move onto voter rolls improperly ahead of the 2024 vote?
An accountant’s solution may apply: Highly possibly, it also depends.
In order to return to the source of the improper registration, the states must eliminate unsuitable voters from voter registration lists, using their DMVs. The” Motor Voter” Act, or” National Voter,” has expanded voter registration by integrating it with driver license issuance since it was passed in 1993. Additionally, it led to a sequence of noncitizens appearing on voter rolls.
Many on the quit claim it’s illegal for noncitizens to register to vote and to throw vote, so that’s that. However, it is up to the states to check on their membership status when millions of people opt into subscription quickly in at least 44 states, yet if they answer “no” on the membership problem.
Many states do use “legal presence” codes provided by the DMV to check. Since 1996, Arizona has used the DMV’s data to at least at least filter out noncitizens for state elections. More states could follow suit and comply with two essential pillars of motor voter: making accurate rolls available to the public.
Biden urging voters to register as left-leaning.
Voter disenfranchisement concerns have soared among election-security organizations since the Biden administration’s implementation of Executive Order 14019, which commandeers political appointees in federal agencies to enter the business of registering voters at taxpayer expense.
That’s with good reason. Many states reveal their process for removing ineligible voters from their rolls and refuse to comply with section 8 of the NVRA. Pennsylvania admits to “accidentally” registering some 90, 000 noncitizens via motor voter automated registrations.
Legislators in Pennsylvania and civic organizations are battling the executive order’s apparent intent to target Democratic-leaning populations with registration materials, which are being pushed by political appointees whose jobs depend on who is in the White House. The Supreme Court is currently hearing whether the plan is constitutional. Non-governmental organizations ( NGOs ) have also been discovered handing out registration documents to the influx of illegal immigrants who are assisting in the country.
Virginia’s Positive Example
As part of a state’s modernization strategy, which it exited in 2023, the controversial Electronic Registration Information Center ( ERIC ) has confirmed that it will now add a validation check to the DMV’s legal presence codes. The multi-state voter roll maintenance partnership has received criticism for pushing expansive voter registration efforts, particularly the requirement that member states reach out to “eligible but unregistered” voters ( EBUs ) from lists compiled by ERIC, according to The Federalist in March.
The issue is that many of the EBUs that ERIC-member states are required to send registration materials have already turned down the application because they are not citizens. In Virginia, Public Interest Legal Foundation ( PILF ) discovered that Virginia had to filter out more than 168, 000 ineligible voters from its “unregistered but eligible” ( UBE ) list, thanks to DMV “legal presence” codes.
Similar issues were discovered in Colorado by PILF’s research, which used more than 30 000 foreign nationals to obtain registration cards from ERIC’s UBE data from sources like the DMV’s motor voter. One of the many reasons at least eight states left the pact was due to ERIC’s failure to fix this mailing issue.
States can do more to address the DMV glitch that causes DMV records to automatically send noncitizens to voter rolls as well as general roll maintenance. Virginia now cross-references the list with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services ‘ Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements ( SAVE ) database of immigration status once it has received “no” responses to the citizenship question on the motor voter registration data.
House to Put Members on Record
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has long complained about noncitizens casting ballots after their names were added to the “motor voter” voter rolls. He most recently announced that he would introduce legislation that would require cross-checks of the SAVE database in order to register to vote.
In a world of big data, states are now able to verify voter registration data’s accuracy and legitimacy from a wide range of sources. For instance, Virginia collaborated with Naphsis, a nonprofit health information hub for nonprofits, and the Social Security Administration to identify and remove more than 18, 000 deceased voters from voter rolls over the years.
Also, when Virginians move away from the Old Dominion, at least 40 states send driver- license surrender information back to Virginia’s Department of Elections to update its rolls.
Noncitizens Do Vote
Although corporate media outlets claim ( without citation ) that noncitizens voting illegally “almost never happens”, Virginia’s Department of Elections ‘ records , show that they do. At least 1, 481 distinct registrations, with the reason code” Declared Non-Civil,” have been removed from voter rolls this year according to recent data from monthly maintenance records.
They erased the legal ballots ‘ history by disenfranchising them. Voting records indicate that 838 associated ballots were cast prior to the voter rolls were cleaned.
Virginia’s attorney general responded that it had received no criminal referrals from the towns where years of illegal ballot casting had been conducted. In the last ten years, Virginia has removed more than 11, 000 noncitizens from voter rolls, according to PILF.
According to PILF research, permanent residents ( “green card holders” ) are the most likely recipients of automated motor voter registrations to appear on voter rolls. Noncitizens who overstay their student visas are the next highest group they cite. After receiving a work permit, foreign nationals who have already broken the law by entering the country illegally are the third most likely group to appear on voter rolls via soft spots in voter-registration programs.
The local county registrar, according to Chris Rohland, a voter-technology researcher for a voter nonprofit in Virginia, is actually in charge of checking eligibility.
” As I look at]software ] logs for the pollbooks, I do see registration information at different points of time in the logs”, he says. The DMV’s voter data pipeline is currently being processed before being entered into the state’s VERIS ( formerly known as VERIS ). That data is sent to a’ hopper’ in every locality of Virginia. And that’s typically where all voter identification assignments are made,” Rohland noted.
At that point,” What mechanism exists to verify citizenship” ? , Election- security groups have an answer: They can start by checking DMV legal presence codes.
