Monday, May 09, 2016
http://electionlawblog.org/?p=82629
"You have to be a citizen to vote," but with same-day voter registration, "you have places where people just walk in and vote."
— Donald Trump on Sunday, May 8th, 2016 in an interview on 'Meet the Press'
Donald Trump wrongly says noncitizens can vote when there is same-day voter registration.
Trump is right and Politifact is wrong.
Trump is known for being a blowhard and a liar, but he's not wrong here.
His claim is that 1) there are places 2) where non citizens walk in and 3) vote.
So for this to be verified there would need to be at least two places and least two non-citizens who vote. That's a verifiable claim.
Politifact tries to change his claim around to add a bunch of terms and conditions, but that's not what he said. My guess is that he has in mind Wisconsin, where "vouching" was used to let people vote without ID. I think, but I'm not sure, that Wisconsin got rid of vouching because it enables fraud.
It is not impossible for noncitizens to get ID, either legally or otherwise. There are factors that discourage them from doing so, and a rational non-citizen would be deterred, but not everybody is rational. In a county of some 330 million citizens, and maybe 15-30 million non-citizens, it would shock me if at least two of them didn't vote. There are safeguards that make this rare, but not impossible. Allowing election day registration removes some of those safeguards, while promoting
wider participation. Tomorrow is election day here in Nebraska. There's no election-day registration, the cut off was last month. I'm not a citizen of Nebraska, I'm just passing through, but if there were same day registration I would have been able to vote here.
Many of us have seen the videos of how same day registration in New Hampshire enabled carpetbaggers to vote in the important New Hampshire primary. Generally that was Americans from out of state rather than non-citizens, but I'm not sure how they check.
Politifact is owned by a newspaper, the Tampa Something or Other, Tampa Bay Times, which in turn is owned by a school. It is not unusual for newspapers and colleges to skew strongly Democrat,and have few or no Republicans. My guess is there is no partisan parity at Politifact, that it is staffed disproportionally by liberals and Democrats,and that had harmed their ability to objectively check facts.
I have not specifically checked the partisan affiliation of the staff there; this is a hypothesis on my part. But I'd bet even money it checks out.
Trump seems to think so too.
"And PolitiFact which is by the way is a totally left-wing group. They are bad news as far as checking. You can tell something 100 percent and they can make it out to a lie if you're a certain person. So PolitiFact didn't like the idea that I said dancing on rooftops, dancing in the streets." I'm not citing him to try to prove my point, only saying that my insights are not original; I assume it's obvious to many people that they are biased and not reporting facts.
"You have to be a citizen to vote," but with same-day voter registration, "you have places where people just walk in and vote."
— Donald Trump on Sunday, May 8th, 2016 in an interview on 'Meet the Press'
Donald Trump wrongly says noncitizens can vote when there is same-day voter registration.
Trump is right and Politifact is wrong.
Trump is known for being a blowhard and a liar, but he's not wrong here.
His claim is that 1) there are places 2) where non citizens walk in and 3) vote.
So for this to be verified there would need to be at least two places and least two non-citizens who vote. That's a verifiable claim.
Politifact tries to change his claim around to add a bunch of terms and conditions, but that's not what he said. My guess is that he has in mind Wisconsin, where "vouching" was used to let people vote without ID. I think, but I'm not sure, that Wisconsin got rid of vouching because it enables fraud.
It is not impossible for noncitizens to get ID, either legally or otherwise. There are factors that discourage them from doing so, and a rational non-citizen would be deterred, but not everybody is rational. In a county of some 330 million citizens, and maybe 15-30 million non-citizens, it would shock me if at least two of them didn't vote. There are safeguards that make this rare, but not impossible. Allowing election day registration removes some of those safeguards, while promoting
wider participation. Tomorrow is election day here in Nebraska. There's no election-day registration, the cut off was last month. I'm not a citizen of Nebraska, I'm just passing through, but if there were same day registration I would have been able to vote here.
Many of us have seen the videos of how same day registration in New Hampshire enabled carpetbaggers to vote in the important New Hampshire primary. Generally that was Americans from out of state rather than non-citizens, but I'm not sure how they check.
Politifact is owned by a newspaper, the Tampa Something or Other, Tampa Bay Times, which in turn is owned by a school. It is not unusual for newspapers and colleges to skew strongly Democrat,and have few or no Republicans. My guess is there is no partisan parity at Politifact, that it is staffed disproportionally by liberals and Democrats,and that had harmed their ability to objectively check facts.
I have not specifically checked the partisan affiliation of the staff there; this is a hypothesis on my part. But I'd bet even money it checks out.
Trump seems to think so too.
"And PolitiFact which is by the way is a totally left-wing group. They are bad news as far as checking. You can tell something 100 percent and they can make it out to a lie if you're a certain person. So PolitiFact didn't like the idea that I said dancing on rooftops, dancing in the streets." I'm not citing him to try to prove my point, only saying that my insights are not original; I assume it's obvious to many people that they are biased and not reporting facts.
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