Saturday, October 25, 2014

"Could non-citizens decide the November election?"

"Could control of the Senate in 2014 be decided by illegal votes cast by non-citizens? Some argue that incidents of voting by non-citizens are so rare as to be inconsequential, with efforts to block fraud a screen for an agenda to prevent poor and minority voters from exercising the franchise, while others define such incidents as a threat to democracy itself. Both sides depend more heavily on anecdotes than data."
Our data comes from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES). Its large number of observations (32,800 in 2008 and 55,400 in 2010) provide sufficient samples of the non-immigrant sub-population, with 339 non-citizen respondents in 2008 and 489 in 2010. For the 2008 CCES, we also attempted to match respondents to voter files so that we could verify whether they actually voted.  
How many non-citizens participate in U.S. elections? More than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples indicated that they were registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-citizens voted. Our best guess, based upon extrapolations from the portion of the sample with a verified vote, is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010. (read the whole thing)

13 comments:

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

There's probably someone out there ready to argue that non-citizens should be allowed to vote because they pay sales tax.

bagoh20 said...

One side sees this as a problem of lawlessness, unfairness, and cheating.

The other side sees it as an opportunity and pretty damned good luck.

YoungHegelian said...

This isn't new. One of my co-workers used to tell us about his Boston Irish non-citizen grandmother who used to not only vote, but, when reminded that she needed to annually register at the Post Office as a resident alien would respond "Oh, laddie, that's for them furriners, doncha know.".

ricpic said...

The horrible Al Franken won his Senate seat by 312 votes! His edge? Non-citizen Somali votes cast in St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Unknown said...

I was just thinking about al franken. (ugh)
One would think with a stolen election (by 312 votes) that tons of resentment would have built-up over these years. Esp with his vote for Obamacare.
I would assume Al would be in trouble with voters. Instead I read that he is leading by "double digits". ?
WTF?
I don't trust that. The dots do not connect.
By chance a few weeks ago, I heard al frankensteins challenger on the Sean Hannity show and I thought he was pretty great. Well spoken, down to earth. Huge improvement.
Why won't the GOP support Frankens challenger?
What the hell is wrong with Minnesota?

KCFleming said...

Minnesota non-Democrats figure they'll cheat just enough to win. No point voting anymore.
Just my POV.

I'm Full of Soup said...

How many times have I said this ? "When at least one out of every ten residents is not a citizen, that is the best argument for Voter ID".

chickelit said...

Eric the Fruit Bat said...
There's probably someone out there ready to argue that non-citizens should be allowed to vote because they pay sales tax.

I think they believe that if somebody is merely present, they should get a vote. That and they have a deep-seated belief that the white man stole the nation and they are just stealing it back (cf. Crack).

chickelit said...

Wasn't Ritmo seriously arguing about allowing felons in prisons to vote a while back?

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

It's too late for me to vote in Florida.

The deadline for new voters closed before I went to register.

I could still vote in NJ if I happened to be there election day.

This is some screwed up system we have where I can't vote but an illegal can.

ken in tx said...

I already voted in South Carolina although I am in North Carolina and on my way to Texas. If I really wanted to, I think I could probably vote three times.

ken in tx said...

When I changed my address online with the post office, a temporary one for NC and a permanent one for TX, each time the website offered for me to register to vote at the new address.

edutcher said...

This is what I've been saying the past 2 years.