Foreign Interference in US Elections

            Liberals in both parties have been upset about President Donald Trump met with Putin and did not pressure him about Russians interfering in the 2016 presidential election. They are still upset that Hillary Clinton was not elected and are blaming the Russians for her loss. They do not want Russians interfering in our elections, but they turn aside any questions about other foreigners affecting our election outcomes.

            All Americans should be concerned about any foreign attempts to affect our elections. However, the Russian attempts are “a national security and counterintelligence issue” and “not an electoral issue” according to Daniel Horowitz. 

Nobody can say that the Russians made a difference with the actual voters in the Midwest who elected Trump. But what does make a difference is foreign nationals actually voting in our elections as well as being counted in the Census. They do more than influence our elections; they downright shape, distort, and irretrievably alter the outcome of our elections. Why is there no concern about this issue among the political class? …

The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) – otherwise known as the motor voter law – requires states to offer those obtaining driver’s licenses the option of registering to vote. The problem is that without strong mandates to check citizenship status, this law turned into basically a government requirement to register non-citizens to vote! Non-citizens, even legal immigrants, have no standing to vote in our elections. 

The courts have downright prevented states from asking for proof of citizenship on voter registration forms, and in many states, we are stuck with nothing more than an honor system to ensure that only Americans are choosing American leaders. Thus, when non-citizens erroneously register to vote, it often takes years to discover because of all the lawsuits against any state that employs commonsense measures to secure the integrity of our elections.

Worse, a dozen states hand out driver’s licenses to illegal aliens – more than a million in California alone – and other states are being forced to do so by the courts.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that this system and the amalgamation of a number of immigration factors, court decisions, and legal mandates have created a ubiquitous problem of non-citizens voting….

            Horowitz writes much more about non-citizens being registered to vote, and I encourage you to read his entire article. Any person with common sense can see that there is a problem when we allow non-citizens free access to voter registration. Horowitz continues his article on a slightly different non-citizen problem – counting non-citizens in the Census.

It’s worse than foreign nationals simply voting in our elections. All illegal aliens are counted in the Census and give states like California more representation in the House and in presidential elections, even when they don’t all actually cast ballots. This is the ultimate disenfranchisement of Americans. Now, the legal profession is working in the courts to prevent the Trump administration from even asking about immigration status on the Census, much less discounting illegals in the 2020 reapportionment.

The distortion of our elections is amplified by dual-nationality voting – with over 1 million Mexican-Americans voting in both American and Mexican elections, while Mexican presidential candidates campaign for votes on our shores while bashing our government. Where is the concern of foreign meddling by Mexico?

            Horowitz is correct in stating that there are many instances where foreign nationals interfere with US elections. He does not only enumerate and explain some of the problems, but he gives some suggestions on how to solve them.

A sane Republican Party would introduce a legislative agenda to broadly address foreign meddling in our elections on all fronts while aggressively pursuing a counterintelligence effort against Russian espionage. That agenda should:

. Explicitly authorize states to require proof of citizenship to vote.

. Require that states and localities use the federal SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) database or E-Verify to check for non-citizens voting.

. Stop counting illegal aliens in the Census for purpose of reapportionment.

. Treat states that offer driver’s licenses to illegal aliens as sanctuary cities and cut off special federal law enforcement grants.

. Disallow dual citizens to vote in foreign election while voting in American elections.

. Tighten up section 8 of the motor voter law, which requires states to “make a reasonable effort to remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters,” in a way that even liberal judges can’t misread it.

            As one should be able to plainly see, there are many ways that foreigners can interfere with US elections. However, liberals seem to be concerned only with Trump for not condemning Putin for Russian interference. Democrats do not want to do anything about the illegal aliens who affect our elections because most of them support the Democrats. They clearly count on this new demographic to keep them in office. The thing that concerns me is the fact that Republicans are not actually doing anything to solve the problems. The suggestions by Horowitz could make a big difference in election integrity IF Republicans would take some actions on them.