Elites and a disgraced attorney general tell us there is no serious problem with voter fraud. The funny thing is, these same deniers never care to look for it. When you actually do the work and look for cases of aliens registered to vote and casting ballots — you find them.
Meet Kassia Kamara from New Jersey, an alien who lurked on American voter rolls for years, even voting in the 2008 presidential election.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation (disclosure: which I head) has been probing for aliens and for documents about their presence on the voter rolls. These probes involve no strange lights outside the bedroom window. No spaceships, and no hybrids. Just good old-fashioned public records requests.
The latest alien sightings were in New Jersey. There, PILF found proof of aliens on the rolls: hundreds of them. The particular findings about aliens on New Jersey rolls can be found at the “Garden State Gotcha” report, published here.
One particular alien sighting in Newark perfectly captures how our honor system for keeping non-citizens off the voter rolls is failing. Then, making it worse, shoddy voter roll maintenance is keeping aliens on the rolls, and even letting aliens vote in our elections.
PILF found that Kassia Kamara, a non-citizen, was registered to vote in New Jersey, not once, not twice, but three separate times at once. Kamara even voted in the 2008 election.
It took seven years for the ineligible records to be discovered by happenstance and fixed by election officials in Newark. Seven years.
Here’s how it happened, according to records obtained in a public records request by the Public Interest Legal Foundation. Understanding how the system is failing is a prerequisite to fixing the system.
Kamara initially registered to vote in May 2004. He listed his address and the other basic information required on the voter application. He also checked the box saying “yes,” he was a U.S. citizen.
That’s the honor system we have. Groups like the League of Women Voters threaten, badger, and sue states that seek proof of citizenship.
Later, in October 2004, a Kassiah Kamara registered to vote under the same address and date of birth.
Fast forward to October 2008, right before the Obama vs. McCain presidential election. Kassiah Kamara registered to vote yet a third time under the same contact information. At this point, he has three unique voter identification numbers.
Kassiah Kamara then successfully cast a ballot in the 2008 presidential election.
Government documents reveal that Kassiah Kamara was registered three separate times, at the exact same address on Pennington Street in Newark, New Jersey, using the exact same birthdate: June 21, 1986. His three separate unique voter registration record numbers are 101601533, 101578535, and 151015257.
Skip ahead again to March 2011. Essex County received a message from Kassiah Kamara stating:
I’m not a U.S. citizen please remove me from the system.
Oops.
Message from Kassiah Kamara to election officials. (Source: Essex County election records)
County election officials then discovered that Kamara was registered three separate times. Triple oops. His registration was finally cancelled for being an alien on March 15, 2011, after spending seven years active on the voter rolls and voting in at least one presidential election.
When I speak about events like this, people wonder how this could happen. They assume there are effective checks in the system.
They’re wrong.
If you are tempted to think that “this is just one guy in New Jersey, it really doesn’t matter,” you’d be wrong.
For starters, it’s not just one guy, and nobody knows the full scope of the problem beyond the hundreds of aliens in New Jersey PILF already found. Moreover, these aliens are often lied to by political operatives about their right to vote, and are told they are allowed to register.
When that happens, they set themselves up for deportation.
PILF was back on the ground in New Jersey working on follow-up research for “Garden State Gotcha.” Remember, PILF originally found 616 cases of non-citizens interacting with New Jersey’s voter registration system. A few counties failed to provide data at press time and required PILF to chase down the reporting counties.
The case of Kassiah Kamara is an excellent example for Congressional lawmakers of the power of the National Voter Registration Act’s right for any person to walk into an office and demand inspection of voter records. If you want to find fraud, just look for it.
In cases I’ve worked on around the country, I’ve learned some voter fraud lessons.
If you are an alien who wants to vote, falsely checking the box “yes” will get you on the rolls, almost always without detection.
It’s easy to register to vote multiple times, especially under your own name. One bad keystroke can create a duplicate. Omitting a middle name will do the trick, also. Transpose some numbers in your birth date, and you’re good to go. Toss in a maiden name to throw off the scent.
The average voter registration system does not suspect a duplicate registration unless every single entry matches perfectly or almost perfectly. “Daniel” and “Daneil” must be two different people, the system reckons.
Local officials are usually tasked with ferreting out the truth of potential duplicates. And local officials often balk at or bungle the task. It’s just too much work, and they don’t want to be sued by the League of Women Voters or all the Chicken Little organizations who argue that efforts to keep the rolls clean are the second coming of Jim Crow.
An aside and some free advice: you academics and professional activists who push the idea that keeping clean rolls is a KKK plot to disenfranchise minorities should really reassess your strategy. Most Americans think you’re silly. Like Trump and the NFL kneeling mess, you’ve badly miscalculated where the public is on election integrity.
The public is on the side of keeping voter rolls clean and alien votes out of the ballot box. But do please keep pushing the hysteria, because it hurts your cause.
It was easy for Kassiah Kamara to vote. He didn’t have to follow a voter ID law that would’ve flushed out a green card or a New Jersey ID that states “not for federal purposes.” He just had to show up at the right polling place.
Throughout PILF’s research in the Garden State, we’ve learned that roughly 75 percent of non-citizens stuck in the voter registration system didn’t seek to register to vote. They were prompted to sign up at the DMV thanks to a Motor Voter law that often sees state officials pushing voter registration to anyone with a heartbeat. Aliens caught in this game of gotcha try to fix it as soon as they try to naturalize, because registering to vote can lead to deportation.
Essex County, New Jersey, voter registration officials were perplexed by PILF’s inquiries that found the alien Kamara on the rolls. One Essex County election official said:
“Noncitizens are getting offered voter registration forms at the DMV — so what?”
This attitude exemplifies what the election integrity advocates are up against across the country, even from election officials.
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