OPINION:
The leftist media-political complex has spent years assuring the American public that illegal aliens and other noncitizens are not voting in our elections.
Yet last week, right after the Justice Department charged 48 noncitizens with illegal voting, fraudulent voter registration and related election crimes in five states, California acknowledged that it does absolutely nothing to confirm the citizenship status of voters. The state is also resisting efforts to verify the citizenship of an estimated 20,000 registered voters flagged by federal officials as likely noncitizens.
The Justice Department also sued California on Oct. 15, asking federal courts to prevent the state from counting mail-in ballots from those voters until their citizenship is verified. The district court denied that request on Wednesday, and the Justice Department has since appealed to the Supreme Court. A final ruling remains pending as of the midterms Tuesday.
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Yet California is already counting ballots, and the state’s attorneys confirmed that any noncitizen votes will be counted unless an emergency stay halts the counting process.
Therefore, the California election has almost certainly been compromised. Foreign nationals have already illegally voted, and California knows it.
How did California get here? Voter registrants must simply attest to their citizenship under penalty of perjury. California does not independently verify citizenship.
In other words, California’s voting system — like that of virtually all other states — operates on an honor system that does not work.
Meanwhile, the state would rather go to court than ensure that as many as 20,000 noncitizens do not illegally vote.
This seems to be a feature, rather than a bug, of the left’s election “nonsecurity” agenda.
For years, the left encouraged open border policies. It has also systematically resisted commonsense efforts to prevent foreign nationals from voting in American elections. It vehemently opposes the SAVE America Act, which would require voter ID and citizenship verification nationwide.
It also continues to gaslight the American public about the threat its policies pose to the integrity of our elections and the future of our nation.
My organization, Judicial Watch, has witnessed this obfuscation firsthand.
Earlier this year, Judicial Watch sued California after records showed 873,092 voter registrations in the state had remained inactive for at least three federal elections, some for much longer.
Thousands of former California residents, such as WMAL radio host and Townhall Editor Larry O’Connor, have received California ballots years after leaving the state.
As if that were not enough, in 2023, Los Angeles County confirmed the removal of 1.2 million inactive voters from its rolls under a lawsuit settlement from Judicial Watch.
Other states have refused to clean up their voter rolls until they were forced into compliance by litigation. In April, Judicial Watch announced a settlement with Oregon election officials confirming that 800,000 ineligible voter names are slated for review and removal.
Similarly, Judicial Watch lawsuits have forced Kentucky to remove about 735,000 ineligible voter registrations since 2018, Colorado to remove about 372,000 ineligible voter names earlier this year and New York City to remove nearly 1 million ineligible names from its rolls following its 2022 settlement.
Judicial Watch legal efforts have also compelled Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio and Illinois to at the very least begin investigating and potentially cleaning up their state voter rolls.
In each state, our lawsuits uncovered a pattern: blue state politicians ignoring or hiding evidence about illegal voting activity, presumably to further their own political agendas.
They are diluting real American votes in the process.
More than 5 million illegal immigrants invaded America during the Biden administration alone. To date, we still do not know how many of these migrants may be voting in our elections.
It is thus critical that California set aside the ballots associated with 20,000 suspicious voter registrations until they are fully investigated.
• Tom Fitton is the president of Judicial Watch.
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