When the mainstream media hammer Donald Trump for focusing on “non-issues,” one of their favorite flash points is his claim that there was widespread voter fraud in the 20016 election. The New York Times reported that “virtually no evidence of such improprieties has been discovered.” The paper’s editorial board called Trump’s statement “a lie,” and the Washington Post’s Fact Checker declared that “this is a bogus claim with no documented proof.”
But a 2013 survey suggests that large numbers of non-citizens were in fact registered to vote, even though citizenship is a prerequisite to voter registration. Published by the journal “Electoral Studies,” the survey, if nothing else, supports Trump’s is assertion that an investigation into possible fraud is necessary.
Via the Washington Times:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
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 presumably be a mix of illegal immigrants and non-citizens who are in the U.S. legally, such as visa holders or permanent residents.
James Agresti, who runs the research company “Just Facts,” took the 13% figure from the poll and extrapolated it to the 2013 U.S. Census numbers for non-citizen Hispanic adults. In 2013, the Census reported that 11.8 million non-citizen Hispanic adults lived in the country, which would amount to 1.5 million illegally registered Latinos. Allowing for the margin of error based on the sample size of non-citizens, Agresti calculated that the number of illegally registered Hispanics could range from 1 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,” Agresti said.
The 2013 Census number may be a low-ball estimate. Agresti also reported that a “2013 study published in the journal Demographic Research … compared Census Bureau survey data on citizenship to the number of naturalized citizens recorded by the U.S. Office of Immigration Statistics. The study found that certain major groups of immigrants — including Mexican men of all ages, Mexican women aged 40 and older, and immigrants who have been in the U.S. for less than five years — frequently misrepresent themselves as citizens.”
Granted, the numbers cited herein are extrapolated from a small sample. Nevertheless, fair-minded Americans should be in agreement that these findings are troubling and justify further exploration.
Cross-posted at The Lid
