Thousands Of Foreign Nationals Registered To Vote In Virginia

Recently, Virginia State Delegate Bob Marshall (R-Manassas) requested that the state’s more than 130 county and municipal governments turn over their respective data on non-citizens, currently listed in jury pools.

The ensuing data showed that officials in Loudoun County disqualified more than 9,000 non-citizens between 2009 and 2014, according to the Washington Times.

Potential jurists in the Northern Virginia county are chosen from both voter registration rolls, as well as Department of Motor Vehicle driver’s license applications.

Of course, this rather startling revelation comes on the heels of President Donald Trump’s allegations that a large number of illegal immigrants voted in last year’s presidential election.

Aside from Trump’s claim that many have characterized as simply an attempt to dismiss Hillary Clinton’s perhaps, hollow victory in the popular vote, other non-partisan entities have presented evidence to support Trump’s assertion.

In 2016, the Indiana-based Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), which researches voter rolls and often brings legal action to protect the integrity of the election process, began examining the voter rolls in several Virginia cities and counties, in order to determine the number of foreign nationals, if any, illegally registered to vote in the state.

“In light of the recent case developments, PILF is now preparing new measures for Virginia jurisdictions still refusing to provide records indicating non-citizen voting activity. PILF previously found more than 1,000 aliens were on Virginia’s voter rolls. These records of alien removal from the rolls were provided by other counties who complied with PILF’s requests for information,” the group stated in a January, 2017, press release.

Furthermore, political science professor Jesse Richman of Old Dominion University, recently published an update to his 2014 study on the number of foreign nationals voting in our elections. The report alleges “that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted, and that of the non-citizens who voted, 81.8 percent voted for Clinton and 17.5 percent voted for Trump.”

That would translate into 834,381 illegally-cast votes for Clinton, according to professor Richman.

While it is obvious that the nation’s voter rolls are in need of a thorough house cleaning, Clinton actually received 2.8 million more votes than did Donald Trump, thus, dismissing the president’s claim that “millions” of illegal immigrants gave Clinton the popular vote.

However, the problem of foreign nationals having any influence on our election process is apparently widespread, and may have been made worse by former President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

In 2013, the state of North Carolina began issuing driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants who qualified for the DACA program. Officials had originally planned to place an easily distinguishable pink stripe at the top of the license, along with the words “NO LAWFUL STATUS” in large, red letters, but under pressure from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), that plan was abandoned.

Now, the DACA license is indistinguishable from any other North Carolina license, save for the phrase “NO LAWFUL STATUS. LEGAL PRESENCE EXPS.: 00/00/0000,” which appears in very tiny print and could easily be missed by a poll worker.

In 2014, the citizens’ advocacy group known as NCFIRE announced that North Carolina driver’s licenses have been issued to 14,836 of those with DACA status. Of those nearly 15,000, about 10,000 of them have recently been discovered on state’s voter rolls.

The North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles submitted the list to the Department of Homeland Security, for cross checking.

NCFIRE did their own study and reported some troubling results.

“Of that number, the often cited 145 DACA individuals who received a NC driver’s license and were registered to vote, was eventually pared down to 119. That still left a list of 9,984 individuals identified by the NC DMV as being “not citizens” by means other than DACA and registered to vote (i.e: green card holders, permanent resident status, etc…).

“After an exhaustive search by the NC State Board of Elections, cross checking the names with the Department of Homeland Security, the original 10,000+/- names were eventually reduced to 2,890 whose citizenship status was “non-citizen” and who also appeared on the NC voter rolls.

“Of that number, 1,250 of them are confirmed illegal aliens and 1,640 do not have enough information to even check if they are legal or illegal, through the DHS.”

Though the votes cast by foreign nationals were not the deciding factor in the 2016 presidential election, it is certainly conceivable that in a tight race, thousands, or even just hundreds of illegally-cast votes could easily make the difference, and actually deliver an erroneous result.

It is currently considered a felony for any non-citizen to vote in a federal election. The punishment can result in imprisonment, a fine, and deportation.

There are several locations in the state of Maryland which allow foreign nationals to vote in local elections, such as Hyattsville, Takoma Park, and Chevy Chase.

[Featured Image by Spencer Platt/Getty Images]