[This commentary was submitted by Union columnist and editorial board member Mr Norm Sauer. It appears concurrently in the newspaper's op-ed pages. gjr]
Norm Sauer
Surely, everyone agrees that protecting our citizens’ right to vote to choose their leaders is most important. Votes that are stolen from Americans who vote lawfully are negated as a result of voter fraud and insecure elections by illegal aliens voting, voting for the dead, or people voting who should not vote.
On Wednesday, July 12, 2017, Thomas Elias’s column gushed about California Secretary of State Alex Padilla’s flat refusal to honor any part of the request of President Trump’s Advisory Commission on Electoral Integrity. Even those on the left, like Bernie Sanders voters, should be concerned with this intransigence.
Research by Pew Foundation and Migration Policy Institute discloses that California houses between 2.35 to 3 million illegal aliens. Jesse Richman, Political Science & Geography Professor at Old Dominion University, conducted in depth research into illegal aliens voting nationally between 2008 and 2012, and found 2.4 percent of those surveyed said they were registered to vote, had validated voter registrations, and had voted.
There is an admitted, systematic well-funded effort by Democrats, including California’s super-majority Democrat party, to dismantle the integrity of the election administration system in our country and state. When 80% or more of illegal aliens vote Democrat, California promotes open borders and being a sanctuary state, policies which change the members of our voting public.
Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act requires states to clean their voter rolls periodically to remove non-citizens, those who died or moved away, or others no longer eligible to vote. It is a federal crime for non-citizens to vote and a second federal crime for a non-citizen to cast a vote in a federal election in the United States.
Having clean voter rolls is important to election integrity. Non-citizens, dead persons, and those moving away should be cleaned from the rolls periodically. Many states, including California, show 20% of the rolls are not clean.
For eight years these federal election integrity measures were fanatically suppressed by President Obama’s Justice Department. Now, the revived enforcement of these laws concern Democrats in California who wish no light shed on our state voter’s rolls.
In the opinion of many, California probably has one of the most unreliable voter registration systems in the country. California issues driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants allowing them to automatically be registered to vote under the federal motor-voter laws. Since AB60 passed in 2015, 806,000 illegal immigrants received a driver’s license.
Adding to our disenfranchisement, beginning in 2018 California is moving us toward implementing all mail ballots thereby closing election precincts or voting places. With all mail ballots everyone on the voter rolls gets a ballot, even if non-citizen, deceased, or no longer residing in the voting county if not otherwise removed. And those ballots are returned and counted. They are illegal votes, they offset your and my legal vote, and we won’t know the extent of it. But we do know our right to vote is not being protected by our Democrat politicians.
Until last year, our California Constitution had barred incarcerated felons from voting. In September 2016, Governor Brown signed into law a Democrat-sponsored bill allowing felons who were moved to county jails to vote despite widespread opposition from law enforcement. How many incarcerated felons will be casting votes hereafter? Who knows?
Another failure to protect our voter integrity is California does not belong to the “Crosscheck” verification program that allows states to check voter registration lists with each other to see if they had duplicate voters.
And in our county, I have observed same-day voter registration and voting being allowed. Many of these people vote in more than one state or county in our state. What sort of audit is done to assure these people haven’t voted twice or more? I’m aware of no cross-checking.
There is no good way to guarantee voter integrity without pristine voter rolls. And the Democrats continued denial of voter fraud, refusal to be transparent, and their questionable manipulation of our voting laws will only perpetuate dirty voter rolls and undermine the integrity of the vote of each of us who are lawful citizens.
For me, this is unacceptable, and it should be for you, too. And, as for Secretary of State Padilla and columnist Thomas Elias, I say shame on them. They obviously subscribe to changing the public demographics of who is allowed to vote to include non-citizens, dead people, felons, and same-day registered voters thereby disenfranchising law-abiding citizens while securing one-party rule in California.
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