North Carolina Voter ID law --"discriminatory intent"

[Lord Jim]

BSG, and Big RR, I have over, and over, and over, and over again, posted reputable evidence of very substantial numbers of non-citizens being on the voter registration rolls.

In fact I have posted it so many times, that I can't paste it any more because the board functionality wont you let you use quotes more than three levels deep; you can read it again here:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16189&p=210814&hilit=zombie#p210814

And because of the way most of this limited data has been compiled (non-citizens dumb enough to show up for jury duty) it's quite logical to assume that the full number is some significant multiple of what has been uncovered. (Probably millions, not thousands)

And the problem isn't just illegal aliens on the voter registration rolls. As the study conducted by the TV station in Florida in the video you'll see at that link shows, there's also a significant problem with legal resident aliens registering to vote.

Now, if the counter argument to that is, "well, just because all these non-citizens have registered doesn't mean that any of them are actually voting", I submit that is a very poor argument indeed...

I challenge anyone who believes that, to put forward a credible alternative explanation for this widespread non-citizen voter registration other than the people registering are doing so because they have a desire to be able to vote...

Absent such a credible alternative explanation, it is more than reasonable to assume that non-citizens register to vote for the exact same reasons that citizens register to vote (ie, they want to be able to vote), and that they turn out to vote in roughly the same percentages as their legally eligible citizen counter-parts.

[Big RR]

Jim--you quote the Cutting Edge as a legitimate news source? Look at their website and tell me if they are just as truthful about the aims of freemasonry or the new world order. Hardly an unbiased source, even if they do claim to be quoting the GAO or FBI.

Or maybe their take on global warming as scientists controlling the weather?

http://www.cuttingedge.org/news/n1196.cfm

[Burning Petard]

"BSG, and Big RR, I have over, and over, and over, and over again, posted reputable evidence of very substantial numbers of non-citizens being on the voter registration rolls"

So how would voter id rules change this? "reputable evidence of very substantial numbers of non-citizens being on the voter registration rolls" is also evidence that the registration process it self is a failure. The local government agencies are not checking the data submitted by the prospective registrant. The 'common sense' justification for voter id assumes that the agency issuing the id will do the job the registration system is supposed to do but is not.

snailgate

[Lord Jim]

Big RR, the only reason I was willing to use that website, is because they cited specific studies from reputable sources...it was a re-printed article...

Your conclusion apparently is that they just made the references and the accompanying numbers up...

Well permit me to allay your concerns...

Here's some info about the author of the article:

Hans A. von Spakovsky served as a member of the Federal Election Commission for two years. Before that, he was Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he specialized in voting and election issues. He also served as a county election official in Georgia for five years as a member of the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections. This report was produced for The Heritage Foundation.

Now I'm sure you don't like The Heritage Foundation either, (frankly I'm not all that crazy about them since Jim DeMint took over) but here's a link to the fully footnoted article that Cutting Edge reprinted:

http://www.heritage.org/research/report ... ting#_ftn1

And oh yes, here are all 68 footnotes:

[1] Gov't Accountability Office, Elections: Additional Data Could Help State and Local Election Officials Maintain Accurate Voter Registration Lists 42 (2005).

[2] Steven Camarota, Ctr. for Immigr. Stud., Immigrants in the United States, 2007: A Profile of America's Foreign-Born Population 31 (2007).

[3] Crim. Div., Pub. Integrity Section, U.S. Dep't of Just., Election Fraud Prosecutions & Convictions: October 2002- September 2005 (2006).

[4] See U.S. Dept. of Just., Federal Prosecution of Election Offenses 66 (7th ed. 2007), available at /static/reportimages/2DD52808AE0A9319C365A2F8E1215413.pdf; 18 U.S.C. § 611 (2008).

[5] For example, non-citizens can vote in local elections in Chevy Chase and Takoma Park, Maryland. See Robert Redding, Jr., Purging Illegal Aliens from Voter Rolls Not Easy; Maryland Thwarted in Tries So Far, Wash. Times, Aug. 23, 2004.

[6] Justin Levitt, Brennan Ctr. for Just., The Truth About Voter Fraud 18 (2007), available at /static/reportimages/2A42DB41ACB73C9DBE32FD3F31D9CC4D.pdf.

[7] Another problem not discussed in this paper is the inclusion by the Census of non-citizens, legal and illegal, in apportion­ment, which leads to the misallocation of congressional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. This causes states such as Indiana, Michigan, Montana, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Kentucky, and Mississippi to have one less seat than they should and states such as Texas, New York, California, and Florida to gain seats they would not have if only citizens were counted. This represents an obvious and clear Equal Protection problem-a violation of the principle of "one man, one vote"-since it takes fewer votes to be elected to Congress in districts with large numbers of non-citizens. See Dudley L. Poston, Jr., Steven A. Camarota, & Amanda K. Baumle, Ctr. for Immigr. Stud., Remaking the Political Landscape: The Impact of Illegal and Legal Immigration on Congressional Apportionment 1 (2003).

[8] Daren Briscoe, Non-citizens Testify They Voted in Compton Elections, L.A. Times, Jan. 23, 2002, at B5.

[9] A judge's removal of the mayor from office was later overturned, but the removal of a councilwoman who participated in non-citizen voter fraud was upheld. See Bradley v. Perrodin, 106 Cal. App. 4th 1153 (2003), review denied, 2003 Cal. LEXIS 3586 (Cal. 2003); Robert Greene, Court of Appeal Upholds Perrodin Victory Over Bradley in Compton, Metro News-Enter., March 11, 2003; Daren Briscoe, Bob Pool & Nancy Wride, Judge Voids Compton Vote, Reinstalls Defeated Mayor, L.A. Times, Feb. 9, 2002.

[10] Judge Voids Compton Vote, Reinstalls Defeated Mayor, supra note 9.

[11] See H.R. Doc. No. 105-416 (1998).

[12] The Committee found "clear and convincing" evidence of 624 non-citizens voting but only "circumstantial" evidence of another 196 non-citizens voting. Thus, the Committee did not include the 196 in its tally of invalid votes. Id. at 15.

[13] Id.

[14] The margin is just 35 votes if one includes the 196 non-citizens found by the Committee based on "circumstantial" evidence.

[15] Press Release, California Sec'y of State, Jones Releases Report on Orange County Voter Fraud Investigation (Feb. 3, 1998).

[16] Richard Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School, doubts that illegal aliens register to vote because "committing a felony for no personal gain is not a wise choice." Jessica Rocha, Voter Rolls Risky for Aliens: Non-citizens' Registering Is a Crime; 4 Cases Turn up in N.C., News & Observer, Dec. 7, 2006.

[17] Gov't Accountability Office, supra note 1, at 60.

[18] In a typical example, voter registration cards are listed as an acceptable secondary source document to prove identity when obtaining a driver's license in Maryland. See Maryland Motor Vehicle Association, Sources of Proof, http://www.marylandmva.com/DriverServ/Apply/proof.htm (last visited July 7, 2008).

[19] 8 U.S.C. § 1324a (2008).

[20] U.S. Citizenship and Immigr. Serv., Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, /static/reportimages/58D2A5EEED8FA592941127875FAE6A07.pdf (last visited July 7, 2008).

[21] See In Re Report of the Special January 1982 Grand Jury 1, No. 82 GJ 1909 (N.D. Ill. Dec. 14, 1984), at 8-9.

[22] See Douglas Frantz, Vote Fraud in City Outlined at Hearing, Chi. Trib., Sept. 20, 1983, at A1; Hans von Spakovsky, The Heritage Foundation, Where There's Smoke, There's Fire: 100,000 Stolen Votes in Chicago (2008), available at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Legalissues/lm23.cfm.

[23] Desiree F. Hicks, Foreigners Landing on Voter Rolls, Chi. Trib., Oct. 2, 1985.

[24] 8 U.S.C. §§ 1373(a), (c). Given the requirements of this statute, the initial refusal of the Justice Department and the INS to comply with "numerous requests from the Committee and California election officials to provide citizenship data on individuals" in the Dornan-Sanchez investigation was inexplicable; the Attorney General either made a basic legal error or decided, for political reasons, not to cooperate in an investigation that could have thrown out the Democratic winner of a congressional race. See H.R. Doc. No. 105-416, at 13 (1998).

[25] Robert Redding, Purging Illegal Aliens from Voter Rolls Not Easy; Maryland Thwarted in Tries So Far, Wash. Times, Aug. 23, 2004.

[26] Id.

[27] See Letter of March 22, 2005, from Sam Reed to Robert S. Coleman, Director, Seattle District Office, USCIS (Mar. 22, 2005).

[28] INS Hampers Probe of Voting by Foreigners, Prosecutor Says, Houston Chron., Sept. 20, 1997. The investigation was started when a random check by local INS agents found 10 non-citizens who had voted in just one 400-person precinct, and the case was eventually turned over to the local district attorney for prosecution. The government, however, refused to expand the probe to cover the full country as requested by the agents, who claimed that the probe was halted because of the super­visor's fear of the potential "political ramifications." See Frank Trejo, Internal Strife Embroils Dallas INS Office-Local Agents' Whistle-Blowing Leads to Far-Flung Controversy, Dallas Morning News, March 8, 1998; Dena Bunis, Dallas INS' Probe of Electorate Echoes Here: Fallout from the Dornan-Sanchez Inquiry Sparks an Internal INS Debate Over a Texas Computer-Match Investigation, Orange County Reg., June 5, 1997.

[29] Ruth Larson, Voter-Fraud Probe in Dallas Runs into INS Roadblock: Agency Denies It Should Have Further Aided U.S. Attorney, Wash. Times, Sept. 25, 1997.

[30] On March 1, 2003, the Immigration and Naturalization Service was split into two different divisions of the new Depart­ment of Homeland Security. USCIS is responsible for legal immigration and naturalization functions, while ICE is respon­sible for enforcing immigration and customs laws, including against illegal aliens.

[31] Christina Bellantoni, Little to Stop Illegal Aliens from Voting, Wash. Times, Sept. 24, 2004, at A1.

[32] Criminal Div., supra note 3.

[33] Id.

[34] John Fund, Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy 1 (2004); see also Kathleen Hunter, States Slow to Give Driver's Licenses to Illegal Aliens, Stateline.org, July 1, 2004.

[35] Karen Saranita, The Motor Voter Myth, Nat'l Rev., Nov. 11, 1996, at 42.

[36] Id.

[37] Id.

[38] Affidavit of Nelson Molina, H.R. Doc. No. 105-416, at 181 (1998). Molina's wife was in the meeting with the field director and filed a supporting affidavit.

[39] Non-Citizen Voting and ID Requirements in U.S. Elections: Hearing Before the Committee on House Administration, 109th Cong. (2006) (statement of Paul Bettencourt, Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector and Voter Registrar).

[40] Joe Stinebaker, Loophole Lets Foreigners Illegally Vote; 'Honor System' in Applying Means the County Can't Easily Track Fraud, Houston Chron., Jan. 16, 2005.

[41] Guillermo Garcia, Voter Fraud Case Takes a New Twist, Express-News, Sept. 12, 2007; Jim Forsyth, Hundreds of Non Citizens Have Registered to Vote in Bexar County, 1200 WOAI, May 16, 2007.

[42] Interview with Kevin Tyne, Deputy Sec'y of the State of Arizona (May 27, 2008).

[43] AZ to Seek Dismissal of Challenge to Voter ID Law, KTAR 92.9 FM, May 26, 2008.

[44] See Purcell v. Gonzalez, 549 U.S. 1, 3 (2006).

[45] AZ to Seek Dismissal of Challenge to Voter ID Law, supra note 43.

[46] Securing the Vote: Arizona: Hearing Before the Committee on House Administration, 109th Cong. (2006) (statement of Andrew P. Thomas, Maricopa County District Attorney); see also Transcript of Southwest Conference on Illegal Immigration, Border Security and Crime, May 16, 2006.

[47] Id.

[48] Id.

[49] Press Release, California Sec'y of State, Official Status Report on Orange County Voter Fraud Investigation (Feb. 3, 1998).

[50] U.S. Const., art. I, § 2, amend. XVII.

[51] U.S. Const., art. II, § 1, cl. 2.

[52] See U.S. Dep't of Just., supra note 4, at 66.

[53] An exception exists if the election is held partly for some other purpose, the alien is authorized to vote for such other purpose under a state or local law, and that voting is conducted "independently of voting" for candidates for federal offices. 18 U.S.C. § 611 (2008).

[54] 42 U.S.C. §§ 1973gg-3(c)(2)(C), 1973gg-5(a)(6)(A)(i), 1973gg-7(b)(2) (2008).

[55] 42 U.S.C. § 15483(b)(4)(A)(i) (2008).

[56] 42 U.S.C. § 1973gg-10(2) (2008).

[57] 42 U.S.C. § 1973gg-3 (2008).

[58] Daniel Vock, Tighter License Rules Hit Illegal Immigrants, Stateline.org, Aug. 24, 2007; Kathleen Hunter, States Slow to Give Driver's Licenses to Illegal Aliens, Stateline.org, July 1, 2004.

[59] Juan Elizondo, Jr., Agency Accused of Misusing Law, Austin Am.-Statesman, June 27, 1997.

[60] Letter from Joseph D. Rich, Chief, Voting Section, Civ. Rts. Div., U.S. Dep't of Just., to Donald H. Dwyer, Jr. (Aug. 24, 2004), available at http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/voting/hava/MD_ltr2.htm. In my discussions with election officials when I was at the Justice Department, it seemed that they were very concerned about being sued by the Department of Justice under the NVRA for not fully complying with the driver's license voter registration provisions. Most state officials found it easier and less risky to register all driver's license applicants regardless of their citizenship status.

[61] Interview with Don Dwyer, Maryland Delegate (June 23, 2008).

[62] Off. of the Legis. Auditor Gen., State of Utah, ILR 2005-B, February 8, 2005; Deborah Bulkeley, State Says 14 Illegals May Have Cast Ballots, Deseret Morning News, Aug. 8, 2005. At least 20 of the registered voters were under deportation orders.

[63] Bill Would Change Voter Registration Rolls, Associated Press, Feb. 7, 2006.

[64] 42 U.S.C. § 15483(b)(4)(A) (2008).

[65] See Ohio Sec'y of State, Directive No. 2004-31, Sept. 7, 2004; Letter from Chris Nelson, South Dakota Sec'y of State, to County Auditors (Oct. 25, 2004); Letter from Thomas J. Miller, Iowa Att'y Gen., to Chester J. Culver, Iowa Sec'y of State (Oct. 20, 2004).

[66] 42 U.S.C. § 15483(b) (2008).

[67] 42 U.S.C. § 15483(a)(5) (2008).

[68] 42 U.S.C. § 1973gg-6(g) (2008).

Feel free to check them for yourself...

You may not like the damning conclusions that Mr. Spakovsky's research compels one to reach, but the credibility of the scholarship of his findings is indisputable.

So I ask the VFDs here, again...

What is your credible explanation for why so many non-citizens are registering to vote other than that they want to be able to vote?

[Big RR]

Jim--thanks for the back up; I'll look at it when I get a chance.

ETA:

Your conclusion apparently is that they just made the references and the accompanying numbers up...

Based on what I read about the Cutting Edge Organization, I don't think this is all that much of a stretch; I have the same concerns about articles in the national Enquirer and Weekly World News. And you have provided further information. And while I don't like the Heritage Foundation's politics, I don't think they're in the same league as Cutting Edge, and I don't dismiss their publications out of hand.

[RayThom]

Voter Fraud: Here's a "Mountain Of Evidence" that says otherwise.

Debunking The Conservative Media's 2014 Voter Fraud Horror Stories:
http://mediamatters.org/research/2014/1 ... -fr/201382

[Lord Jim]

Not one word in the article at the link of that lefty organization that even attempts to address, (let alone refute) the data compiled by Mr. Spakovsky which documents the real problem...

No "mountain of evidence" there; not even a molehill of evidence...

Just the usual VFD diversionary shine...

[Bicycle Bill]

Once upon a time it was just common sense that voters should know a bit about the government before voting, little things like be able to name all the counties in the state, and then all the county seats for each county. That last one usually was enough to eliminate uppity coloreds.

snailgate

There are 99 counties in Iowa (I know, I've ridden my bicycle in each and every one of them at some point in my life), and over 250 counties in the state of Texas.  I wonder if even the governor of either state, let alone any member of the legislatures, could readily name all of them.

-"BB"-

[Big RR]

Depending on their ethnicity, they probably never had to.

[Econoline]

Snailgate asked a VERY good question, which no one here has yet attempted to answer: "So how would voter ID rules change this?"

For example, how does requiring an elderly woman who has been voting for decades (like Guin's mother) to make multiple trips to multiple locations to get multiple documents in order to exercise her constitutional right to vote specifically target non-citizens? How does purging the voter rolls of voters with names similar to the names of convicted felons (or voters with names similar to the names of people registered to vote in another state, or voters who haven't voted for a certain number of years) specifically target non-citizens?

It seems to me that there has been shown very good evidence of legislators in several states designing voting laws specifically and intentionally to make it harder for certain types of CITIZENS to vote; rarely if ever have there been discussions at the state legislative level about how to specifically target NON-CITIZENS--and certainly not in any of the states whose voter ID laws have been successfully challenged.

Here's something that federal judge James Peterson wrote last July, in an opinion striking down Wisconsin's voter ID law:

• "The Wisconsin experience demonstrates that a preoccupation with mostly phantom election fraud leads to real incidents of disenfranchisement, which undermine rather than enhance confidence in elections, particularly in minority communities. To put it bluntly, Wisconsin's strict version of voter ID law is a cure worse than the disease."

There you have it: don't we have an obligation to make sure the cure is not worse than the disease?

[Lord Jim]

mostly phantom election fraud

Ah there's the VFDs love affair with the "voter impersonation" strawman again...

Speaking of VERY good questions, I'm still waiting for an answer to my VERY good question:

So I ask the VFDs here, again...

What is your credible explanation for why so many non-citizens are registering to vote other than that they want to be able to vote?

[Econoline]

My (& Snailgate's) question was NOT premised on there being NO registration (or even voting) by non-citizens. The question is--EVEN IF what you say is true--are the voter ID laws and other such voter-suppression measures really designed to combat this problem? (Especially since there are many instances of Republican legislators admitting among themselves that they have designed the rules for another purpose entirely.)

And if prevention of voting by non-citizens really IS the purpose of such laws, exactly how do they do so--i.e., why do you think this is something that will work toward that purpose?

And finally, do these laws do more harm than good, or, more generally, don't we have an obligation to make SURE that the amount of good they do (in preventing people who shouldn't vote from voting) is more than the harm they do (in preventing people who are legally entitled to vote from voting)?

[oldr_n_wsr]

As for your contention that people not legally eligible to vote being part of the democratic block, I would love to see the proof of that as well. Many noncitizens, especially among Hispanics, are conservative and family values supporters; some (like many of the Cubans located ehere0 are even rabid anti-communists who would make Joe McCarthy proud. They are hardly a monolithic block.

A "block" or not, a large majority vote Democrat.
And Hillary is leading in the Latino vote as dems usually do.

Latino Voters in the 2012 Election

Obama 71%; Romney 27%

By Mark Hugo Lopez and Paul Taylor

Latinos voted for President Barack Obama over Republican Mitt Romney by 71% to 27%, according to an analysis of exit polls by the Pew Hispanic Center, a Project of the Pew Research Center.1

Obama’s national vote share among Hispanic voters is the highest seen by a Democratic candidate since 1996, when President Bill Clinton won 72% of the Hispanic vote.

The Center’s analysis finds that Latinos made up 10% of the electorate, as indicated by the national exit poll, up from 9% in 2008 and 8% in 2004.2 The analysis also shows that as a group, non-white voters made up 28% of the nation’s electorate, up from 26% in 2008.3

Battleground States

Hispanics made up a growing share of voters in three of the key battleground states in yesterday’s election—Florida, Nevada and Colorado.

Obama carried Florida’s Hispanic vote 60% to 39%, an improvement over his 57% to 42% showing in 2008. Also, Hispanics made up 17% of the Florida electorate this year, up from 14% in 2008.

The state’s growing non-Cuban population—especially growth in the Puerto Rican population in central Florida—contributed to the president’s improved showing among Hispanic voters. This year, according to the Florida exit poll, 34% of Hispanic voters were Cuban while 57% were non-Cuban. Among Cuban voters, the vote was split—49% supported Obama while 47% supported Romney. Among the state’s non-Cuban voters, Obama won 66% versus 34% for Romney.

In Colorado, Obama carried the Latino vote by a wide margin—75% to 23%. The president’s performance among Latino voters in Colorado was better than in 2008, when Obama won the Latino vote 61% to 38%. Hispanics made up 14% of Colorado voters this year, up from 13% in 2008.

In Nevada, Obama won the Hispanic vote 70% to 25%. However, the president’s Hispanic vote was down from the 76% share he won in 2008. Among voters in Nevada, the Hispanic share was 18%, up from 15% in 2008.

In other states, the president also carried large shares of the Hispanic vote. Among other battlegrounds, Obama won 68% of the Hispanic vote in North Carolina, 65% in Wisconsin, 64% in Virginia and 53% in Ohio.

Top Issues for Hispanic Voters in 2012

For Hispanic voters, according to the national exit poll, 60% identified the economy as the most important issue (of four listed) facing the country today, virtually the same as the share (59%) of the general electorate that identified the economy as the nation’s most important issue. On the other three issues asked about, for Hispanic voters, the economy was followed by health care (18%), the federal budget deficit (11%) and foreign policy (6%).

Throughout this election cycle, the issue of immigration has been an important issue for Hispanics. In the national exit poll, voters were asked about what should happen to unauthorized immigrants working in the U.S. According to the national exit poll, 77% of Hispanic voters said these immigrants should be offered a chance to apply for legal status while 18% said these immigrants should be deported. Among all voters, fewer than two-thirds (65%) said these immigrants should be offered a chance to apply for legal status while 28% say they should be deported.

Demographics of the Latino Vote

Among Latino voters, support for Obama was strong among all major demographic sub-groups. Yet some differences were evident. According to the national exit poll, Hispanic women supported Obama more than Hispanic males—76% versus 65%.

Latino youth, just as all youth nationwide, supported Obama over Romney, but did so by a wider margin—74% versus 23% for Latino youth compared with 60% versus 37% among all youth. Obama won other Latino age groups by nearly as large a margin.

Among Hispanic college graduates, 62% voted for Obama while 35% supported Romney. By contrast, 75% of Hispanics without a college degree voted for Obama while 24% voted for Romney.

Another gap was evident among Latino voters when viewed by income. Among Latino voters whose total family income is below $50,000, 82% voted for Obama while 17% voted for Romney. Among Latino voters with family incomes of $50,000 or more, 59% voted for Obama while 39% voted for Romney.

About this Report

Exit poll results for this report were obtained from CNN’s Election 2012 website and are based on National Election Pool national and state exit poll surveys of voters as reported on November 6, 2012. In addition to an analysis of the national Latino vote, 12 states were examined. These states are Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

http://www.pewhispanic.org/2012/11/07/l ... -election/

[Lord Jim]

And in 2008, John McCain got 31% of the Hispanic vote, and the highest ever was GWB in 2004, who got 44%...

So what is your proof that non-citizen Hispanics vote Republican in any higher percentages than Hispanic citizens? (Common sense would tell you it should be lower, given the GOP and Demo positions on giving illegal aliens citizenship)

And of course given the large number of non-citizen Hispanics on the registration rolls, their votes are no doubt already reflected in the 2012, 2008, and 2004 results.

[oldr_n_wsr]

And voter ID (or citizen ID or whatever you want to call it) should be implemented whether or not there is widespread voter fraud or not.
If every persons vote holds the same value, then the sanctity of the voting block should be upheld. Whether or not there is any degree of fraud going on.
I am not for most things that would make the feds (or even the states gov) any bigger or have more power, but this, I would think, would be high on the list of allowable power (IMHO).
Just about everything requires some kind of ID, so it should be for registering to vote. Having some 80yo voting pol volunteer decide if my signature is actually my signature seems a little too lenient.
But that's just me.

[Big RR]

So what is your proof that non-citizen Hispanics vote Republican in any higher percentages than Hispanic citizens?

Why would I try to prove something I never said? And why limit yourself to presidential races (where swongs in the piopular vote may have less of an effect than in state and local races)? Those same Florida voters who supported Obama, also voted for Jeb Bush.

Common sense would tell you it should be lower, given the GOP and Demo positions on giving illegal aliens citizenship

Of course, let's not forget that Obama has deported far more illegal aliens than his predecessors, so who knows?

And voter ID (or citizen ID or whatever you want to call it) should be implemented whether or not there is widespread voter fraud or not.

And just why would you want this? What is the governmental interest to be protected absent fraud along the lines Jim stated? And would you want it even if it discouraged some to come to the polls. IMHO, for any democratic process to work, we should make voting easier to get full participation, but that's just me.

[MajGenl.Meade]

I hate swongs

[Big RR]

But piopular is OK?

[MajGenl.Meade]

i figure it must be a Trump thing.

[oldr_n_wsr]

Of course, let's not forget that Obama has deported far more illegal aliens than his predecessors, so who knows?

Not true since the category "deportation" has not existed in immigration law since 1996. And just to confuse us further I found this:

Lies, Damned Lies, and Obama’s Deportation Statistics

This is a guest post from Anna O. Law, the Herbert Kurz Associate Professor of Constitutional Law and Civil Liberties at CUNY Brooklyn College. She is the author of The Immigration Battle in American Courts.

What is the trend in deportation of immigrants under the Obama administration? This seemingly simple question is proving very hard to answer. Consider three characterizations from recent media reports.
Here is The Economist in February 2014:
America is expelling illegal immigrants at nine times the rate of 20 years ago; nearly 2m so far under Barack Obama, easily outpacing any previous president.


In April, the Los Angeles Times wrote:
A closer examination shows that immigrants living illegally in most of the continental U.S. are less likely to be deported today than before Obama came to office, according to immigration data. Expulsions of people who are settled and working in the United States have fallen steadily since his first year in office, and are down more than 40% since 2009.


And last week, Julia Preston of the New York Times reported that in the fiscal year 2013, the immigration courts saw a 26 percent drop in the number of people who have been deported, thereby producing:
… a different picture of President Obama’s enforcement policies than the one painted by many immigrant advocates, who have assailed the president as the ‘deporter in chief’ and accused him of rushing to reach a record of 2 million deportations. While Obama has deported more foreigners than any other president, the pace of deportations has recently declined.


Somehow, the Obama administration is simultaneously responsible for the highest rate of deportation in 20 years and a 26 percent drop in deportation. What is going on here? As it turns out, changes in immigration law, terminology and classification are causing this confusion. not knowing what you are counting is always a problem

One problem is the continued use of “deportation” in virtually all media reporting. In actuality, that category has been obsolete in immigration law since 1996. Prior to 1996, immigration law distinguished between immigrants who were “excluded,” or stopped and prevented from entering U.S. territory, and those who were “deported,” or expelled from the United States after they had made their way into U.S. territory. After 1996, both exclusion and deportation were rolled into one procedure called “removal.” At that point, the term “deportation” no longer had any meaning within the official immigration statistics. Its continued use in media reports is part of the confusion.

The large number of immigrants who are apprehended, usually but not exclusively along the southwestern border, and prevented from entering the country were part of a category called “voluntary departure” before 2006. Now that is called “return,” which also includes the subcategory of “reinstatement.” There is also a large category of “expedited removals” of persons that do not appear before an immigration judge but the procedure carries all the sanctions as a judge ordered removal.

These would-be immigrants accept this sanction that forgoes a court appearance before an immigration judge because formal removal — in which the U.S. government runs them through legal proceedings and pays for their return to their home country — would result in a multi-year bar (five to 20 years) on their eligibility to legally reenter the United States. Critics deride this policy “as catch and release.” The consequences of a return are much less harsh than a formal removal because the returned immigrant could come back legally, and presumably illegally, at any time.

Thus, comparing the deportation statistics across different presidential administrations is dicey because it is unclear what categories of people are actually being counted and categorized. Moreover, different administrations choose to emphasize different statistics. Dara Lind notes that the Bush administration seems to have reported removals and returns together, but Obama’s administration has emphasized only its number of removals.

Meanwhile, many media reports continue to use the term “deportation” when they mean either return or removal or some subset of those.not knowing what they are reporting about is a problem also The Department of Homeland Security that issues official statistics must now try to retrofit new legal categories to old data, and even it cannot excise the term deportation altogether because pre-1996, there were, in fact, deportations.

Confusion about terminology helps explain the conflicting accounts cited above. The aforementioned New York Times article focuses on return numbers. But the Economist is also right, because if you combine the Obama’s return and removal numbers, he is well over the controversial 2 million mark.

This confusion enables political spin, too. If you want to portray Obama as weak on enforcement, use the removal numbers, which, compared to his predecessors, are lower. If you want to make Obama look tougher on enforcement, combine the return and removal numbers (like George W. Bush apparently did) or use the now meaningless “deportation”; both moves would conflate return and removal — and boost the overall number of expulsions.

But don’t expect these nuances to make it into political discourse anytime soon. Way back in 1987, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit described immigration law as “second in complexity only to the internal revenue code.” It would appear little has changed.

CORRECTION: The original post claimed that Obama had de-emphasized removals and concentrated on returns and that the ratio of his removals to returns was skewed toward returns compared to his predecessors. That claim is not correct because based on DHS’s data, (Table 39: Aliens Removed and Returned, FY 1892-2012) his cumulative numbers since taking office show Obama has removed a total of 1,974,688 people and returned 1,609,055 others. There have been more returns than removals only in FY 2009 and 2010. Moreover, comparing across administrations is not wise given the changes in law and counting procedures.

Edited to add this link
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/mon ... tatistics/