U.S. Has 3.5 Million More Registered Voters Than Live Adults — A Red Flag For Electoral Fraud

Elections: American democracy has a problem — a voting problem. According to a new study of U.S. Census data, America has more registered voters than actual live voters. It's a troubling fact that puts our nation's future in peril.

The data come from Judicial Watch's Election Integrity Project. The group looked at data from 2011 to 2015 produced by the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, along with data from the federal Election Assistance Commission.

As reported by the National Review's Deroy Murdock, who did some numbers-crunching of his own, "some 3.5 million more people are registered to vote in the U.S. than are alive among America's adult citizens. Such staggering inaccuracy is an engraved invitation to voter fraud."

Murdock counted Judicial Watch's state-by-state tally and found that 462 U.S. counties had a registration rate exceeding 100% of all eligible voters. That's 3.552 million people, who Murdock calls "ghost voters." And how many people is that? There are 21 states that don't have that many people.

Nor are these tiny, rural counties or places that don't have the wherewithal to police their voter rolls.

California, for instance, has 11 counties with more registered voters than actual voters. Perhaps not surprisingly — it is deep-Blue State California, after all — 10 of those counties voted heavily for Hillary Clinton.

Los Angeles County, whose more than 10 million people make it the nation's most populous county, had 12% more registered voters than live ones, some 707,475 votes. That's a huge number of possible votes in an election.

But, Murdock notes, "California's San Diego County earns the enchilada grande. Its 138% registration translates into 810,966 ghost voters."

State by state, this is an enormous problem that needs to be dealt with seriously. Having so many bogus voters out there is a temptation to voter fraud. In California, where Hillary Clinton racked up a massive majority over Trump, it would have made little difference.

But in other states, and in smaller elections, voter fraud could easily turn elections. A hundred votes here, a hundred votes there, and things could be very different. As a Wikipedia list of close elections shows, since just 2000 there have been literally dozens of elections at the state, local and federal level decided by 100 votes or fewer.

And, in at least two nationally important elections in recent memory, the outcome was decided by a paper-thin margin: In 2000, President Bush beat environmental activist and former Vice President Al Gore by just 538 votes.

Sen. Al Franken, the Minnesota Democrat, won his seat by beating incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman in 2008. Coleman was initially declared the winner the day after the election, with a 726-vote lead over Franken. But after a controversial series of recounts and ballot disqualifications, Franken emerged weeks later with a 225-seat victory.

Franken's win was enormous, since it gave Democrats filibuster-proof control of the Senate. So, yes, small vote totals matter.

We're not saying here that Franken cheated, nor, for that matter, that Bush did. But small numbers can have an enormous impact on our nation's governance. The 3.5 million possible fraudulent ballots that exist are a problem that deserves serious immediate attention. Nothing really hinges on it, of course, except the integrity and honesty of our democratic elections.

SOURCE

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Trump-Endorsed Immigration Bill Would Save Taxpayers Trillions

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump endorsed the RAISE (Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment) Act introduced by Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and David Perdue, R-Ga., a bill to reform the merit-based immigration system and limit low-skill immigration.

Low-skill immigration is very costly to U.S. taxpayers. For example, a legal immigrant without a high school degree typically receives $4 in government benefits for every $1 he pays in taxes.

By limiting future low-skill immigration, the RAISE Act has the potential to save U.S. taxpayers trillions of dollars in future years.

There are 12.8 million low-skill legal immigrants with a high school degree or less currently residing in the U.S. The households headed by these low-skill legal immigrants impose a net fiscal cost (total government benefits received minus total taxes paid) of $150 billion each year.

The $150 billion tax burden is equivalent to a $1.04 tax on every gallon of gas purchased by U.S. motorists every year for the foreseeable future.

The RAISE Act seeks to curtail future fiscal costs linked to low-skill immigration by eliminating chain migration, the visa lottery, and the current low-skill worker allotment. It also caps the future flow of refugees and asylees.

Nearly 400,000 legal immigrants enter the U.S. through these channels each year. The majority of these appear to be low-skill.

The bill’s reforms to chain migration are particularly important.

Chain migration starts with a foreign citizen who is given a green card. This individual is allowed to bring in his or her nuclear family consisting of a spouse and minor children.

Once the original immigrant and his or her spouse become U.S. citizens, they can petition for their parents, adult sons and daughters, and adult siblings and brothers- and sisters-in-law to also enter.

This second group can bring their minor children. Once they become citizens, the brothers- and sisters-in-law and parents can petition for their siblings, in-laws, and parents to legally enter the U.S.

The RAISE bill limits future chain migration. Each future migrant can bring only nuclear family members.

Parents can be brought to the country on a guest visa but will not be given access to government benefits or citizenship status. The sponsors must demonstrate that they have purchased insurance to cover the future medical costs of the parent.

The U.S. tax and benefit system is redistributive—it provides extensive benefits to less skill/low-wage individuals while asking them to pay comparatively less in taxes. On average, low-skill individuals, whether non-immigrants, legal immigrants, or illegal immigrants, impose substantial costs on U.S. taxpayers.

The report’s calculation of government benefits is comprehensive—it includes routine government services such as police and fire protection, highways and sewers; public education costs; benefits from over 80 means-tested welfare programs such as Medicaid, food stamps, the earned income tax credit, and housing vouchers; and other government direct benefits, including Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance.

The report also provides a comprehensive analysis of taxes paid at the federal, state, and local levels, including personal income taxes, FICA taxes, sales taxes, excise taxes, property, and business taxes.

Having estimated the government benefits received and the total taxes paid, the report then analyzes the fiscal balance (total government benefits received minus total taxes paid) for immigrants and non-immigrants with different levels of education.

The report shows that less educated individuals, whether immigrants or non-immigrants, receive far more in government benefits than they pay in taxes.

In particular, the report provides 75-year projections for the fiscal balance of immigrants and their immediate descendants based on the immigrant’s education level. It measures future cost in "net present value."

Based on the National Academy of Sciences’ estimates, the average low-skill immigrant (with a high school degree or less) who enters the country imposes a net present value on taxpayers of negative $142,000.

This means the government would need to immediately raise a lump sum of $142,000 and put it in a high-yield bank account to cover the future net fiscal cost (total benefits minus total taxes) of that immigrant.

The National Academy of Sciences’ cost figures represent a mixture of costs for legal and illegal immigrants. The RAISE Act is focused directly on low-skill legal immigrants.

Since low-skill legal immigrants receive more benefits, their fiscal impact is greater than similar illegal immigrants. The net present value for a legal immigrant with a high school degree or less is around negative $170,000, and the undiscounted long-term fiscal cost (benefits minus taxes) would be around $476,000 in constant 2012 dollars.

Over the last decade and a half, an average of 470,000 low-skill adult immigrants (both legal and illegal) have arrived in the U.S. each year. The net present value of this inflow is around negative $67 billion per year.

Of course, in the next year another 470,000 would arrive, requiring another lump sum payment of $800 per taxpaying household. The year after, another 470,000 will arrive, requiring another $800 per taxpaying household, and so on.

Fiscal costs can also be analyzed per decade. Under existing government laws and policies, an estimated 4.7 million low-skill immigrants (both legal and illegal) are likely to enter the U.S. over the next decade.

The fiscal net present values of these immigrants to the taxpayers will be around negative $670 billion. In other words, government would need to immediately raise taxes by $670 billion to cover the future costs.

Of course, the government will not actually raise taxes in this manner—instead, the future costs will be hidden and passed on to future taxpayers.

The future net outlays (benefits given less taxes paid) for the inflow of 4.7 million low-skill immigrants will be around $1.9 trillion (in constant 2012 dollars).

Over half these costs are linked to future low-skill legal immigration. By limiting future legal low-skill immigration, the RAISE Act could save at least $1 trillion.

Additional large savings could be achieved by limiting future illegal immigration. These saving figures apply to only a single decade of low-skill immigration. Similar savings would occur by limiting low-skill immigration in subsequent decades.

Opponents of such reforms argue that such immigration increases the gross domestic product.

It is true that immigration increases the GDP, but as Harvard immigration economist George Borjas explains, 98 percent of the increase "goes to the immigrants themselves in the form of wages and benefits."

Metaphorically speaking, low-skill immigrants increase the economic pie, but they eat nearly all the increase themselves.

Low-skill immigration reduces the wages of similar U.S.-born workers. An immigration-induced increase in the low-skill labor force of 10 percent can reduce the wages of low-skill non-immigrant labor by 3 to 10 percent.

Some studies show wage losses as high as 17 percent. Black male wages and employment are especially hard hit. By reducing wages of less skilled non-immigrants, low-skill immigration increases economic inequality in the U.S., redistributing income from the least advantaged Americans to the more affluent.

Finally, low-skill immigration shifts the political balance in the nation.

According to Cooperative Congressional Election Survey, the political alignment of immigrants is far to the left that of non-immigrants. Immigrants in general are twice as likely to identify with and register as Democrats than as Republicans.

This pattern is somewhat more pronounced among immigrants without a high school degree who are almost three times as likely to register as Democrats than as Republicans.

Low-skill immigration imposes large fiscal costs on U.S. taxpayers. It drives down the wages and employment of the disadvantaged American workers (especially black males), and it arbitrarily shifts the political balance in the U.S.

The RAISE Act would appropriately address these problems.

SOURCE

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