August 24, 2004

"Purging illegal aliens from voter rolls not easy"

Maryland election officials have been stymied in their efforts to purge illegal aliens from the state's voting rolls.

They have begun compiling a database of the state's 3 million registered voters, then they "hope to compare our data with the INS [Immigration and Naturalization Service]," said Linda H. Lamone, the state's elections administrator.

Just one or two problems: the INS/DHS only tracks legal immigrants, and they apparently can't give out information on them due to confidentiality. So, are the election officials not entirely "with it," do they know something the INS doesn't know, or are they intentionally spinning their wheels?

The article also contains this charming bit:

"Why would immigrants vote illegally when it puts them at risk?" [Ron Hayduk, professor of political science at the Borough of Manhattan Community College in New York] asked. "There is little evidence that immigrants actually do vote. It seems to me that the burden of proof is actually on those who claim illegal immigrants are voting."

What the article fails to mention is that Hayduk is an advocate of non-citizen voting. See the editorial he co-authored entitled "Let legal immigrants vote in [NYC]".

Compare his comments to that from the earlier article "Md. Elections Officials Vow To Purge Noncitizen Voters From Rolls":

Kim Propeack, an immigrant advocate who works for CASA Maryland and sought to defeat Dwyer's legislation, said elections officials are worrying about a problem "that doesn't exist."

"I know hundreds of Maryland residents who are not yet citizens, and none of them have ever registered to vote," she said. "They know they're not supposed to vote, and they don't vote."

Why, it's almost as if they're reading from the same script. If "immigrant advocates" tell us there isn't a problem, there probably is.

Posted to Immigration2004 at August 24, 2004 01:17 PM

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