Since 2003, according to the Government Accountability Office, federal programs have made at least $2.7 trillion in “improper payments,” meaning money paid out to scammers and cheaters.
The GAO says a full accounting would show even more fraud. Such fraud is pervasive across all programs, including Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the SBA, HUD, SNAP (formerly known as food stamps) and dozens of others. In nearly every instance of fraud, someone signed a form claiming they were entitled to the money, under penalty of perjury.
However, only a small fraction of this money (maybe 11%) is recovered through investigations and prosecutions.
Yet we American citizens are asked to believe that a voting process conducted mostly on the honor system operates almost completely fraud-free. Democrats and left-leaning groups consistently oppose election integrity measures, saying they are unnecessary because in this sphere of our public life, unlike all others, fraud is rare.
Especially ripe for fraud is voting by noncitizens, who are ineligible to vote in federal elections.
At least 30 million noncitizens live in the U.S., including an estimated 10 million who have entered illegally during the Biden administration. What’s to stop them from registering and voting?
Nothing but the honor system. In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that the “Motor Voter” law prohibits states from requiring proof of citizenship when processing federal voter registration forms. Everyone who obtains a driver’s license (or signs up for public benefits) is provided a registration form. If they fill it out and check the box saying they are a citizen, then — presto! — they are registered to vote. Every state issues driver’s licenses to noncitizens and 19 states issue them to illegal aliens.
Congressional Republicans tried to remedy this with the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE Act). This bill would require states to obtain documentary proof of U.S. citizenship and identity when registering individuals to vote in a federal election. It would also require states to remove noncitizens from their voter rolls.
Last week, this bill passed the House 221-198. All but five Democrats voted against it. The bill is considered DOA in the Senate, and President Joe Biden has already said he would veto it.
Democrats and their media allies say the bill is unnecessary because it’s already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. It’s also illegal to speed, but does that mean we don’t need speed bumps on certain roads? It’s also illegal to sneak over the U.S. border or to lie on an asylum application. But we’re asked to believe that no one who did those things would lie on a voter registration form. Democrats probably don’t believe that themselves.
The Immigration Accountability Project notes that in all the Democrats’ proposed amnesty bills, illegal voting is one of the crimes they list that would not prevent an alien from receiving amnesty.
Why should Democrats discourage noncitizens from voting? D.C. now permits noncitizens to vote in local elections. In their recent primary, more than 500 noncitizens voted and only 28 were Republican. Under a 2021 Biden executive order, U.S. Marshals are required to provide everyone in their custody, including illegal aliens, with voter registration information.
Shortly before the 2016 election, President Barack Obama was asked by an interviewer whether “Dreamers and undocumented citizens” should fear that voting records would be used to carry out deportations. Obama assured her that voting does not trigger immigration investigations.
Obama was talking about ICE. But his assurance would also apply to election authorities.
When a close election results in a recount, many people assume there is a vote-by-vote investigation of voter eligibility. Not so. Elections boards simply recount the votes that have been previously tabulated. Investigations of alleged illegal voting — rare as they are — take months or years, and few prosecutors want to tackle them.
Just to make sure that no inquisitive election board should try to investigate voter eligibility in Michigan, Democrat Gov. Whitmer just signed into law a ban on any recount or audit assessing the qualification of voters or whether mail-in ballots were properly applied for.
In 2017, a North Carolina State Board of Elections audit determined that 700 noncitizens had registered and 136 of them had voted in the 2016 election. That seems like a small number out of nearly 5 million votes cast.
But remember that the 2020 election for Supreme Court Chief Justice was decided by 401 votes. Moreover, the 2017 audit likely failed to identify all noncitizens who voted. The DHS database to which NCSBE compared their voter list only included people to whom DHS had assigned an alien identification number because of agency contact with them. Illegal aliens who have never been detected would not be included.
The 2020 presidential election was decided by about 44,000 votes in three states. Does anyone believe that in an election conducted on the honor system, fewer than 0.14% of our nation’s 30 million noncitizens will find a way to vote in 2024?
Our elections must be made more secure.
John Bruce is a former counsel with the N.C. State Board of Elections and lives in Wake County.