Philadelphia had Hundreds of Non-Citizen Voters in the Last Decade

Philadelphia had Hundreds of Non-Citizen Voters in the Last Decade

Elections officials in Philadelphia discovered that a glitch allowed hundreds of illegal voters to cast ballots in the last decade. From Philly.com:

Commissioner Al Schmidt blamed that on what he said was a PennDot glitch that enabled legal permanent residents to register to vote at kiosks when they applied or renewed for driver’s licenses or registrations.

Only U.S. citizens are eligible to vote, but those in the country legally are able to obtain driver’s licenses in Pennsylvania.

It was unclear how many noncitizens might have registered to vote at PennDot offices statewide, or how many of them had cast ballots. A Pennsylvania Department of State review is underway, but the department said late Wednesday it had records indicating 1,160 people statewide since 1972 had requested cancellation of their voter registrations because they were not citizens.

President Donald Trump often pointed to Philadelphia when voter fraud came up. He has claimed millions of fake votes occurred, but while that number has not been confirmed, this revelation from Philadelphia obviously shows that there’s a problem:

Three hundred and seventeen voters have contacted the City Commissioners, which oversees elections in Philadelphia, since 2006 to have their registrations canceled because, while they were in the country legally, they were foreign citizens ineligible to vote.

Schmidt’s data date back to 2006 because that was when Pennsylvania started using the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors, which provides reliable statistics about voters in the state.

Of the 317, Schmidt’s office has documented 220 — either through direct contact or via an attorney — who were registered to vote from 2006 to 2017. Forty-four of those people voted in one election while 46 voted in more than one election.

All of the 317 registrations have been canceled, Schmidt said.

Schmidt stated that “155 of the ineligible voters registered as Democrats, 23 as Republicans, and 42 as Independents or members of smaller political parties.” Philly.com continued:

Schmidt and his staff traced the problem in Philadelphia primarily to legal residents who are not American citizens, visiting PennDot offices to obtain or update driver’s licenses. That accounted for 168 of the 220 people who contacted the City Commissioners to cancel registrations. The 52 others registered to vote by other means, Schmidt said.

“For the majority of these people, it’s completely plausible to believe they thought they were eligible to vote,” Schmidt said, because they were offered the option to register after giving PennDot documentation that they were in this country legally but not citizens.

The 220 had legitimate immigration documents that gave the ability to apply for driver’s licenses. But during the process of applying for license, they are given the option to register to vote due to a 1993 federal law “what went into effect in 1995 to help encourage voter registration by pairing it with the process to obtain a driver’s license.”

The Washington Times pointed out that illegal voters have been in other states like Virginia and New Jersey:

In each of those states, the PILF [Public Interest Legal Foundation] obtained records of persons who’d had their voter registration canceled because they admitted to being noncitizens, and then matched them up against voting records.

Logan Curchwell, a spokesman for the PILF, said the findings should spur changes to the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, commonly called Motor-Voter, which forced states to sign voters up while obtaining driver’s licenses.

“DMVs should never be in the business of offering voter registration to Green Card holders. The time is now to have a substantive discussion about rethinking Motor Voter,” Mr. Churchwell said.

He said it’s not just voter integrity that suffers. Those immigrants who later try to seek citizenship could have their applications delayed or even denied for voting illegally.

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