A report from the conservative/libertarian think tank Just Facts shows that up to 5.7 million people who cast their ballots in the 2008 presidential election were non-citizens. The group used data from a Harvard study as well as U.S. Census Bureau data to arrive at that conclusion.
Just Facts also estimated that up to 3.6 million non-citizens cast their vote in 2012.
Just Facts’ conclusions confront both sides in the illegal voting debate: those who say it happens a lot and those who say the problem nonexistent.
In one camp, there are groundbreaking studies by professors at Old Dominion University in Virginia who attempted to compile scientifically derived illegal voting numbers using the Harvard data, called the Cooperative Congressional Election Study.
On the other side are the professors who conducted the study and contended that “zero” noncitizens of about 18 million adults in the U.S. voted. The liberal mainstream media adopted this position and proclaimed the Old Dominion work was “debunked.”
The ODU professors, who stand by their work in the face of attacks from the left, concluded that in 2008 as few as 38,000 and as many as 2.8 million noncitizens voted.
Mr. Agresti’s analysis of the same polling data settled on much higher numbers. He estimated that as many as 7.9 million noncitizens were illegally registered that year and 594,000 to 5.7 million voted.
With voter ID laws in so many states, how did the non-citizens get away with it?
“The details are technical, but the figure I calculated is based on a more conservative margin of sampling error and a methodology that I consider to be more accurate,” Mr. Agresti told The Washington Times.
He believes the Harvard/YouGov researchers based their “zero” claim on two flawed assumptions. First, they assumed that people who said they voted and identified a candidate did not vote unless their names showed up in a database.
“This is illogical, because such databases are unlikely to verify voters who use fraudulent identities, and millions of noncitizens use them,” Mr. Agresti said.
He cites government audits that show large numbers of noncitizens use false IDs and Social Security numbers in order to function in the U.S., which could include voting.
Second, Harvard assumed that respondent citizens sometimes misidentified themselves as noncitizens but also concluded that noncitizens never misidentified themselves as citizens, Mr. Agresti said.
“This is irrational, because illegal immigrants often claim they are citizens in order to conceal the fact that they are in the U.S. illegally,” he said.
Some of the polled noncitizens denied they were registered to vote when publicly available databases show that they were, he said.
This conclusion, he said, is backed by the Harvard/YouGov study’s findings of consumer and vote data matches for 90 percent of participants but only 41 percent of noncitizen respondents.
As to why his numbers are higher than the besieged ODU professors’ study, Mr. Agresti said: “I calculated the margin of sampling error in a more cautious way to ensure greater confidence in the results, and I used a slightly different methodology that I think is more accurate.”
The biggest misconception about the problem of non-citizen voting is that illegal aliens are “undocumented.” That’s nonsense. Some experts believe that up to 75% of illegals who work in America have fraudulent Social Security cards. Fake licenses, birth certificates, and green cards are incredibly common. The fake ID industry is worth more than $2 billion.
Registering to vote is a snap and voting with a fake ID is easy. For Social Security cards, most illegals use their real names, but use numbers stolen from someone else. With a fake birth certificate you can get any identity document in the United States.
But is the number of non-citizens voting really that high? The ODU professors cautioned that the range of probability of illegal voting — from 38,000 to 2.6 million — means that the study is a useful tool for research but should not be used as a political weapon. They called out President Trump for misquoting their findings after 90 liberal professors signed a letter blackballing their work.
I have said previously that there is no doubt that illegal alien voting has cost House members their seats. It’s more problematic to believe they swayed a statewide race for governor or senator, although extremely tight races for those offices could easily be tipped to the Democrat by illegal voting.
Liberals will scoff at this study, but the numbers on fake IDs come mostly from the government — SSA and DoJ. If an illegal alien already has a fake driver’s license and registers to vote, there is no way anyone can stop him from casting a ballot.
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