Pennsylvania official who exposed noncitizen voting says threat is exaggerated

During Trump's first term he actually put together a task force to try to find it and ended up dissolving it without any fanfare because they didn't find anything.

The "vague gesturing" happens because the math doesn't work for a conspiracy. If you're a noncitizen trying to build a life in the US, the absolute last thing you’re going to do is sign a government document under penalty of perjury and deportation just to cast one vote in a state of 13 million people. The logic falls apart as soon as you stop looking at them as "invaders" and start looking at them as people who don't want to get kicked out of the country.

I watched a video that was shot during either the 2012 or 2016 election (I've don't remember how to find it or else I would link to it). A documentary crew followed a group of "poll watchers" that were convinced that 1) illegal immigrants were voting and 2) they were voting multiple times. At that point, the group had been active for many years and had tried all sorts of techniques to prove that their conspiracy theories were right. The video showed them executing their new technique that they were sure was going to catch the voting fraud and have the evidence to prove it. They distributed multiple teams throughout a town, one at each polling place. Each team had someone recording every license plate of every vehicle that pulled into the polling place. Each team was on a rotation to radio their collected plates every X minutes to the main team. The main team then checked for the same plate showing up more than once, such as showing up at both precinct A and precinct B. The idea was that the same plate showing up in multiple places would prove that the people in that car were voting multiple times, and they would have their smoking gun. People in their group kept asking their leader if they had found any duplicates yet. "No, not yet," they kept replying. As the day wore on, people in the group had clear confusion in their voices. "Why haven't we found any duplicates yet?" Their leader assured them to stay the course. "It's just a matter of time. Keep focus." Other teams would radio in wanting to know how many duplicates were found, and a team member would say in a sad voice, "none yet." Then the polls closed. They hadn't found a single duplicate plate. People were asking more questions. The leader was radioing all the groups to confirm that they had in fact sent all their plate data. At this point, even the leader seemed a bit shaken. "How did we not find a single matching plate? Not one?" For a moment, it seemed like they might be ready to admit that they could be wrong, but then the leader found an explanation. "They must be switching plates. They are going somewhere and switching plates between poling stations. We should have been tracking the cars and people, not the plates."

They will give a list of names that they can find and put a whole page worth of text to try and prove that it's an issue,  but what they don't realize is that hpse names represent less that a fraction of a fraction of less than .1% of all voters. The claim they are trying to prove is that this is a big enough problem that it swung the 2020 election for Biden. That claim has always been just pure smoke and gaslighting. In fact, the more they ACTUALLY look into it, the fraudsters getting exposed end up, mote likely than not, being registered Republican US citizens, not illegals.

My favorite example of conservatives being desperate for proving the rampant abuse of voter fraud is [the Heritage Institute voter fraud database](https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/commentary/voter-fraud-database-tops-1000-proven-cases) which boasts over 1100 instance of voter fraud! What they leave out is that this database comprised data going back to the 80's, and approximately 20+ elections. meaning there were ~55 proven instances of voter fraud per election on average. A number so infinitesimally small that to call it a rounding error in the total number of votes cast would be a dramatic *overstatement*.

In the handful of cases you could point to, the people usually get caught before actually voting. Because we already have systems in place. And even those systems mostly have false positives because of stuff like lag between DMV record updates when people do become a citizen.

Around here we have conservatives pointing to some woman that registered her dog to vote, they never want to talk about how that woman is currently charged with felonies for registering her dog to vote.

So the right wing think tank The Heritage Foundation has a voter fraud database, that used as the primary “evidence” to justify Republican voter suppression laws. They only have 1620 cases dating back to 1981. The majority of the fraud comes from clerical errors in the early and mid eighties were a the wrong voting district was on a ballot so 100s votes should not have counted but was fixed post election. As far as non citizens voting they only have 41 cases 38 of those were people who were far in the process of gaining citizenship or thought they were eligible but a clerical error didn’t complete official citizenship even though individuals were in the country for decades.

The majority of voter fraud was done by republicans and the number was only in the double digits

In the absence of any real knowledge, chuds instead rely on what they can imagine their enemies are doing to them. They don't understand how voting works beyond their own interactions with it (and being fundamentally incurious people, they will not look into how it works any further) and fill in any gaps with fear. Their fear is packaged and sold back to them by algorithms and they feel legitimized, which further isolates them from reality. Rinse & repeat for any culture war topic you like and there you have a loyal voter base.

It’s also why they really don’t even try to provide and misrepresent examples of fraud. They just go with “why are you against these common sense measures like voter ID”. But then they put a shitton of poison pills in any voter reform acts like the save act to force democrats to vote against them. And then after that, they parrot completely out of context polls that frame them as on the side of the majority of Americans. It’s true people have no problem with requiring voter ID to register. It’s also true that the majority of those people also agree mail in voting should be easy with no need to provide a reason. They agree that if you’re going to require photo ID to register and even vote, that ID (plus the documents required to prove it like birth certificates) should be free and easy to obtain. They *don’t* agree with implementing a de facto poll tax by requiring documents that cost hundreds of dollars to obtain. The *don’t* agree with the government being able to remove people from voter rolls with no notice and no possibility of recourse

There are 176,000 voting precincts in the US. There is an average of 150 fraudulent votes in any given US Federal election. You can go to the Heritage Foundation website and look up and track every case of voter fraud since 1993. Per one of the largest and well known/connected right wing think tanks. For the Conservatively dense...Presidential elections draw just over 150 million votes. Literally less than 1 fraudulent vote for every million votes cast. The right easily disenfranchises thousands of eligible voters every election through suppression tactics and gerrymandering.

Yep and 90% of the time it's a Republican committing the fraud.

Isn't it, like, one case of voter fraud per every state or two per election? The only times I'm familiar with voter fraud actually swinging an election it was always a Republican candidate.

I found this part in the article odd:  (In Pennsylvania, noncitizens are permitted to obtain a driver’s license.) Is there ANY state that does not allow non-citizens to obtain driver's license? Non-citizen does not mean they are illegally in the country. As long as they are here legally in some form of long term visa, they should be able to get driver's license.

I always try to frame the "illegal voters" and the "flat earth" theories as one in the same. Every time someone tries to prove them as true, they actually prove how fake they actually are.

Because even if there was, and there is, the actual amount of  "illegal voting" alleged to be tipping the scales just isnt possible to actually change any election at any level honestly. Its a person or 2 here or there in a county or state.

Because the times it's happened have been (spoiler) conservative republicans!

Oh it does happen, its often Republicans, in my state we have less than 8 cases of voter fraud, all Republicans and it was often wrong address or some innocuous violation and not something like what MAGA is claiming.

Well, that, and there's also the reason that most of the examples they could actually give were done by Republicans.

They've never cared much for letting facts get in the way of their narrative

Well, if they buckled down and looked they would find a bunch of it... ...done by their own side.

Because the actual concrete evidence points back to only Republicans lol

It's all about muddying the waters and putting out false information. Say there are 15,000 votes by illegal aliens enough times and it will convince people there is evidence of it, even of there isn't. Then you swoop in to "save" the elections.

Top 1% but your posts are hidden. Why hide your posts?

He was literally declaring voter fraud in Pennsylvania in the 2024 elections until it swung to him.

Also in the election he lost the gop gain seats in congress. So the cheaters apparently cheats the gop into congress.

One of the first things trump did his first presidency was establish a voter integratory commission and it disbanded within a year so they wouldn't have to share their findings with the democrats. GOP voters always seem to forget this.

Also doesn't help that they have rw media allies eagerly putting those lies on blast swaying their loyal viewers/listeners. In a just society, when media companies are caught knowingly-spreading propaganda (without clearly-labeling it as bs when it's aired), I think they should be called out and there should be significant consequences: Must be fined, for each offense, with an attached-law of "3 strikes (lies) and you're out" of business "death penalty". Must put corrections on the same "blast level" as when the lies were aired. Must air the corrections with the same frequency, duration and time s**** used to propagate those lies (even during prime time (when applicable)). Must have the same hosts, who spread those specific lies, deliver the corrections with the same amount of "enthusiasm" and dramatic effect used to deliver the lies. Imo, over half of our problems in this country could be resolved if we just agreed on the facts, truths, and realities of those issues. (I know..I know..easier said than done.) Media peddling contradictory stories, to help "their team" win the narrative (bonus points, if it's also the truth), is damaging constructive discourse with the public.

and this is a republican official talking! that’s how we know there are no republicans left in federal government. only those in the MAGA party

This Admin is NOT interested in facts! Certainly not any more. Truth and freedom are dying of neglect... In their opinion 'Facts, frankly are the real extortionists!' It's very clear he only gets credit for good stuff. Accountability is someone else's dept, not his. How dare you expect accountability from your President?

The Heritage Foundation, the group pouring tons of money and lobbying into the SAVE act, found 68 instances of non-citizens voting. In 40 YEARS. And the Heritage Foundation was looking very, very closely so they could justify the SAVE act.

"Do you trust that every single vote in the election was legitimate?" -Some Arizona state congresswoman, I think the one that pushed for "Cyber Ninjas" to forensicate the 2020 election. It's a deliberately bad-faith argument.

The irony is that South Dakota is DEEP red. The amount of fearmongering that goes on in this state is f****** astonishing. Back in 2016, the citizens passed an amendment limiting campaign contributions. Our Legislature held an emergency session to repeal the amendment, AND remove ALL campaign finance limitations. So not only did they go against the will of the voters, they removed any financial contribution limits that existed.

Inflate it to _control_ it.

The story points out that he went to a lot of their immigration hearings to testify to the government's mistake. He views these people (or claims to) as people acting in good faith in wanting to become American and not being able to detect some of the jankeries in the system. He points out specifically that he doesn't like the idea that this comes back to bite them because of a programming oversight.

Read the full story. Many did try to naturalize and ended up in deportation hearings. But this dude went to testify to defend them.