In a recent article we discussed the possibility that Democrats will introduce universal voter registration (UVR) legislation this year, and offered that as an explanation for their seeming carelessness in the face of plummeting poll numbers. John Fund of the Wall Street Journal was quoted in the article as asserting that UVR will open the nation up to massive vote fraud. The reasons are straightforward and many: 1. registering people using existing government databases will result in many duplicates; 2. many of the lists contain names of illegal immigrants; 3. the list could be expanded to include felons currently ineligible to vote.
The notion of universal voter registration has been, like most leftist agenda items, a long time in the making, but flying beneath the radar for all but those paying close attention. As a result, most of us are behind the curve. The left can thus present universal voter registration as a much-needed "reform," with talking points and ready answers to objections all lined up, while the rest of us struggle to assess the damage it will do. But it will do damage, potentially permanent damage to our representative republic.
Voter Registration and Registration Fraud
Most of the calls for UVR cite the fact that about 30 percent of eligible voters remain unregistered. (In the last election cycle 29 percent were not registered.) The radical left Nation magazine effuses:
It doesn't have to be this way. Registration rates in other countries frequently run upwards of 90 percent (both Canada and France hit that mark, for example, while Venezuela stands at roughly 94 percent, and Russia about 97).
Venezuela and Russia. How has voter registration worked out for them? Not exactly the role models for democracy if you ask me, but then for the folks at Nation, they're all of a piece. Just ask Bill Ayers.
These folks also argue that UVR will prevent voter registration fraud. If the feds do all the registering, they reason, groups like ACORN that have been tied to rampant registration fraud -- not to mention all their other illegal activities -- will be disenfranchised.
But a look at who is supporting the idea gives the lie to that one. An article appeared last year on Alternet.org, a leftist website run by former Mother Jones publisher Don Hazen. Titled Consensus Builds for Universal Voter Registration, the by-line was Project Vote. This is the same Project Vote where Barack Obama cut his teeth organizing for the Senate election of communist-sympathizer Carol Moseley Braun. Project Vote is at the forefront of the voting rights movement. It is also an ACORN subsidiary.
In 1993, Bill Clinton signed the National Voter Registration Act into law. Commonly known as Motor Voter, the law allows for people to register to vote at welfare offices, motor vehicle departments and other government agencies. These agencies are required to provide necessary forms and even promote voter registration. Democrats billed Motor Voter as a method to make it easier for "disenfranchised voters" to become registered. Note that there was nothing except their own inertia preventing eligible people from registering to vote before this was passed, but the Democrats are all about saving the "poor and oppressed," especially when most of those poor and oppressed will be guaranteed democrat voters.
A 2008 Project Vote report titled Unequal Access: Neglecting the National Voter Registration Act 1995-2007 claimed that, "40 percent of voting-aged citizens from households earning under $25,000 were unregistered." The report further complains that "Thousands of eligible low income voters could be brought fully into the democratic process every day if states fully complied with the NVRA." Once again, these people are perfectly capable of bringing themselves into the "democratic process" if they so choose, but that's not good enough for Democrats. The report also observed that 20 percent of qualified citizens making $100,000 or more remain unregistered, but that didn't seem to bother them.
Motor Voter was anticipated to create a massive potential for voter registration fraud. Events since its passage seem to have borne that out. And while supporters of the law claim that vote registration fraud does not necessarily lead to vote fraud, the danger is clearly there, especially from absentee ballots and in states where only minimal identification is required. It also creates opportunities for voting activists to challenge elections. If the registration process is flawed, they argue, why not the election process itself?
As explained earlier this week, the Motor Voter law was the brainchild of socialists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. Instigators of the Cloward/Piven Crisis Strategy, these two radical activists spent a lifetime dreaming up ways to wreak havoc upon our government, hoping that the crises they fomented would ultimately lead to its collapse. ACORN has been the main vehicle for execution of this strategy. Therefore, the filing of excessive and fraudulent voter registrations may be an end in-and-of-itself. It certainly has created chaos and undermined the integrity of our voting system.
It also could be the pretext upon which the left intended to base their push for universal voter registration. And while there is little doubt, given the current condition of federal and state databases, that such a move would create all kinds of duplication, Democrats would achieve their goal of getting all of those unregistered democrats on the roles. Then all they'd have to do is get them to the polls. No longer having to sully itself with fraudulent registrations, maybe ACORN could turn its attention more fully to get-out-the-vote activities it illegally conducted for the Obama campaign in 2008.
Illegal Immigrant Voting
Critics fear that universal voter registration will allow many illegal immigrants to register and vote. UVR proponents will dismiss the "illegal immigrant" objections by countering that such individuals either won't be counted or could be weeded from voter rolls depending upon the methodology used to register voters. Congressional opponents of UVR will of course seek amendments making sure illegals and felons are excepted. But that is a throwaway for the left. They have something else in mind.
Separate and distinct from UVR legislation, Congress intends to move forward once again on immigration "reform." According to Reuters, the Obama administration has already signaled its intention to push for this in 2010, including "a path to citizenship for the 12 million immigrants living here illegally." There are probably more than 12 million at this point. Since during the healthcare debates the Democrats reduced their estimates of people needing coverage from 47 million to 30 million to subtract out illegal immigrants, implicitly that suggests they believe the current number to be 17 million.
Getting the illegal immigrant vote is key for Democrats in 2010. While registering low income people to vote will guarantee more democrat voters, it may not in-and-of-itself provide the winning margins Democrats need to overcome their growing unpopularity. And while amnesty would provide Democrats with a huge pool of potential new voters, without UVR, the logistical problem of getting them registered to vote in time for the 2010 elections would remain. UVR would solve this problem, guaranteeing these people to be registered to vote the minute they achieved citizenship.
But it doesn't end there. Once again, separate and distinct from UVR, legislators are contemplating granting felons the right to vote. A bill, S 1516, was proposed by Democrats in the Senate last summer. While the Senate bill deals only with felons who have served their time, don't expect it to end there. An organization called ProCon.org claims that in 2004, there were 5.2 million felons "disenfranchised" from voting. That's a lot of potential democrats.
This week the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a Washington state law banning felons from voting. Fortunately saner heads still exist and the state of Washington has asked the Supreme Court to review the 9th Circuit ruling. The Obama administration likely agrees with the 9th Circuit however, having appointed felon-rights advocate Sonya Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.
So, look to Congress to propose both immigration reform and felon "voting rights" legislation. For all this to work, however, Congress needs to propose universal voter registration first. That way they can pretend that illegal immigrants and felons will not be included. This may be why John Fund was so confident UVR would be proposed sometime in January 2010.
But it doesn't even end there. Expect to hear calls for abolishing the Electoral College and moving toward direct Presidential elections. That's in the works too. It can be accomplished without Constitutional amendment. State legislatures can vote to give all their electors to the winner of the popular vote. Direct elections will become law when enough state legislatures have passed legislation to make up a majority of the electoral vote (270 of 538). Only five states holding 61 electoral votes, Hawaii, Washington, Illinois (go figure), New Jersey and Maryland have signed on to this so far, so it will take longer to accomplish. But direct elections will be the last nail in the coffin for our beloved Republic.
Add to this the deliberate sabotage of our economy with unprecedented deficit spending, stimulus bills that stimulate only Democrats while unemployment rises to Depression-era levels, cap and trade legislation that threatens devastating tax increases justified by a hoax, a healthcare bill that will make us all sick while dramatically ramping up costs, add in all the other garbage legislation designed to keep us distracted, distraught and demoralized and you have a prescription for an unprecedented takeover of our country from which we may never recover.
I had hoped it wouldn't come to this. But if it is their agenda to use UVR, illegal immigration and felon votes to steal the 2010 election, and I believe it is, they need to know that we are going to do everything within our power to stop them. They represent gangster government, a radical cabal aiming to consolidate power once and for all by duplicitously using our own institutions against us. If they attempt this, they have lost the legitimate right to lead, and those institutions, by definition, will have been corrupted beyond repair. It will be left to us to get rid of them, and it will be our right to do so, by any means at our disposal.
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