Nearly 2 million non-citizen Hispanics illegally registered to vote
Survey bolsters analysis by professors
By Rowan Scarborough - The Washington Times - Wednesday, February 15, 2017
A large number of non-citizen Hispanics, as many as 2 million, were illegally registered to vote in the U.S., according to a nationwide poll.
The National Hispanic Survey provides additional evidence for use by anti-voter fraud conservatives and bolsters an analysis by professors at Old Dominion University who say non-citizens registered and voted in potentially large numbers.
President Trump has announced he will appoint a task force on voter fraud headed by Vice President Mike Pence. He says he wants the investigation to focus on inaccurate voter registration rolls, which are maintained by the states and the District of Columbia.
“It is a fact and you will not deny it, that there are massive numbers of non-citizens in this country who are registered to vote,” White House adviser Stephen Miller told ABC News. “That is a scandal. We should stop the presses.”
The little-noticed Hispanic survey was conducted in June 2013 by McLaughlin and Associates to gauge the opinions of U.S. resident Latinos on a wide range of issues.
Inside the poll is a page devoted to voter profiles. Of the randomly selected sample of 800 Hispanics, 56 percent, or 448, said they were non-citizens, and of those, 13 percent said they were registered to vote. The 448 would presumedly be a mix of illegal immigrants and noncitizens who are in the U.S. legally, such as visa holders or permanent residents.
A 1996 federal law, and other statues, makes it a felony for non-citizens to register. The poll did not ask if they voted.
But James Agresti, who directs the research nonprofit “Just Facts,” applied the 13 percent figure to 2013 U.S. Census numbers for non-citizen Hispanic adults. In 2013, the Census reported that 11.8 million non-citizen Hispanic adults lived here, which would amount to 1.5 million illegally registered Latinos.
Accounting for the margin of error based on the sample size of non-citizens, Mr. Agresti calculated that the number of illegally registered Hispanics could range from 1.0 million to 2.1 million.
“Contrary to the claims of many media outlets and so-called fact-checkers, this nationally representative scientific poll confirms that a sizable number of non-citizens in the U.S. are registered to vote,” Mr. Agresti said.
Another 8.3 million non-Hispanic non-citizen adults were living in the U.S. in 2013, according to the Census.
As the nation’s immigrant population, both legal and illegal, grows, the question of non-citizens voting illegally has caught the attention of more grass-roots conservative groups. Aliens tend to vote Democratic and have the ability to sway a close election.
The focus intensified in 2014 when two professors at Old Dominion University and one at George Mason University collaborated to produce perhaps the first data-driven analysis of non-citizen voting, relying on the biennial Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), headquartered at Harvard University, with polling by YouGov.
Relying on the CCES responses to citizenship questions, ODU team estimated that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in the 2008 election. They presented a range as low as 38,000 and as high at 2.8 million.
The CCES authors at Harvard, Amherst and YouGov reacted with outrage. They said the small number of respondents among a sample of 38,000 people made the answers meaningless. They picked at their numbers, declared them unreliable and concluded that zero noncitizens voted.
Their rebuttal prompted the liberal media to proclaim the ODU study “debunked” even though those professors stick by their work and have filed counter-rebuttals.
The 2013 Hispanic Survey tends to confirm the ODU work and chief defender, professor Jesse Richman. The Hispanic Survey’s 13 percent registration rate is right in line with what the CCES data indicates in multiple elections.
Mr. Agresti said the ODU paper found that in 2008, 2010 and 2012 between 14.5 percent and 15.6 percent of self-declared non-citizen adults were registered to vote.
In other words, the CCES and National Hispanic Survey, done with different sample sizes, align.
Still, the liberal media declares the ODU work “debunked.”
McLaughlin and Associates conducted the Hispanic poll for John Jordan, a winery owner and Republican activist. California vineyards rely on Latino farm workers.
The media’s dismissal of voter fraud has not chased the White House from the issue. Mr. Miller, the senior While House adviser, made the case Sunday on “ABC’s This Week,” angering host George Stephanopoulos.
“An issue of voter fraud is something we’re going to be looking at very seriously and very hard,” Mr. Miller said. “But the reality is, is that we know for a fact, you have massive numbers of non-citizens registered to vote in this country. Nobody disputes that.”
He added, “The White House has provided enormous evidence with respect to voter fraud, with respect to people being registered in more than one state, dead people voting, non-citizens being registered to vote And as a country, we should be aghast about the fact that you have people who have no right to vote in this country, registered to vote, canceling out the franchise of lawful citizens of this country.”
Instead of focusing on the registration issue, an agitated Mr. Stephanopoulos lashed out at Mr. Trump for claiming there were 3 million to 5 million illegals voting Nov. 8 and that voters were bused in from Massachusetts to vote in New Hampshire.
“You have provided zero evidence that the president’s claim that he would have won the general — the popular vote if 3 million to 5 million illegal immigrants hadn’t voted, zero evidence for either one of those claims,” the host said.
In his Super Bowl interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, Mr. Trump veered away from the 5 million prediction and instead said he wants his task force to focus on cleaning up registration.
“It has to do with the registration,” he said “And when you look at the registration and you see dead people that have voted, when you see people that are registered in two states, that have voted in two states, when you see other things, when you see illegals, people that are not citizens and they are on the registration rolls.”
“Look, Bill we can be babies, but you take a look at the registration, you have illegals, you have dead people, you have this, it’s really a bad situation, it’s really bad.”
When Mr. O’Reilly reminded the president he has not presented data to show that 3 million illegals voted, Mr. Trump said, “Forget that. Forget all that. Just take a look at the registration and we’re going to do it.”
