Currently, there is an estimated record high of 44.5 million foreign-born residents living in the U.S. This is nearly quadruple the immigrant population in 2000. The vast majority of those arriving in the country every year — more than 1.5 million annually — are low-skilled foreign nationals who go on to compete for jobs against working class Americans.
Another complication is that federal law forbids non-citizens from voting in federal elections, a crime punishable with a fine, up to one year in prison, deportation, and ineligibility for visas and admission to the U.S. But illegals, who have voted in favor of the Democrats over Republicans in U.S. elections, have done so unchecked in states that allow non-citizens to obtain driving licenses. At the time of license renewal, their names are added to the voter rolls without any attempt to verify their citizenship.
Exclusive — Perdue: Stacey Abrams Wants to Give Illegal Aliens the ‘Right to Vote’; Democrats Would Control Georgia ‘Forever’
Former Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) believes Democrats would have perpetual control over Georgia should Stacey Abrams be elected governor, he said during an interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Saturday.
Perdue, who announced this week he is running for governor, warned frontrunning Democrat candidate Abrams’ push to loosen voting restrictions would translate into Georgia law if she were to win the race, and that her new laws would open the state to never-ending Democrat election victories.
“We need to understand, we will not get Georgia back if she wins this governor’s race. She has talked about opening our borders. She’s talking about opening our elections to have no voter ID. She wants illegal immigrants to have the right to vote — anybody can vote. This would put them in power forever,” Perdue said.
Listen:
Abrams has been hyper-focused on voting laws since 2018, when she lost to Gov. Brian Kemp (R) in her first run for governor by less than two percent. She claimed her loss was a result of “voter suppression,” and she has notoriously never conceded the race.
Abrams also became an outspoken voting rights activist that year, launching the group Fair Fight, which has raked in more than $100 million in fundraising since its launch, per federal election records.
In the midst of her ongoing activism, the Georgia Democrat has conveyed somewhat muddled positions on voter ID laws specifically, appearing to compromise on the issue at one point this year as Congress sought to pass an election overhaul bill that would, in part, federalize aspects of the voting process but maintain voter ID requirements, per an analysis published by the Washington Post in June.
The Post report settles on Abrams’ position being that she does not oppose voter ID requirements but that she opposes “restrictive” voter ID requirements.
Perdue recalled of Abrams’ behavior in the 2018 election aftermath, “She’s immediately claimed that she had been cheated and there’s voter suppression, and now she’s gone around and made a lot of money, millions of dollars, over the last three years telling the country that she’s really the governor of Georgia and that she was she was cheated out of it by voter suppression.”
Perdue, a wealthy businessman and cousin to former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue (R), won his election for U.S. Senate in 2014. In his bid for reelection in 2020, he beat now-Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) but did not meet the 50 percent threshold required by Georgia election law to clinch the victory. The race moved to a runoff, where he and former Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) — who was competing in her own runoff — both narrowly lost in blockbuster races that resulted in Democrat control over the U.S. Senate.
The defeats followed President Joe Biden being certified the winner of the presidential election in Georgia by around 12,000 votes out of five million cast — the first Democrat presidential candidate to take the state in nearly 25 years.
Abrams has been largely credited with the Democrat victories because of her aggressive activism with ballot measures and get out the vote efforts during the last election cycle. However, former President Donald Trump has also been the leading voice in blaming Kemp for the Republican losses, and Perdue — who was quickly endorsed by Trump when Perdue launched his campaign — has echoed similar concerns about Kemp.
Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) attends a rally with Vice President Mike Pence in support of both he and Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) on December 4, 2020 in Savannah, Georgia. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Perdue said Saturday he decided to run for governor “against an incumbent Republican governor who I think gave away the election process to Stacey Abrams in 2020 and has lost confidence of our party, and I just don’t see any way that he can beat Stacey Abrams.”
One point of criticism against Kemp was over a consent decree his secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger (R), signed off on in March 2020. The consent decree was a settlement between the Georgia Democrat Party and Raffensperger that elaborated on the state’s process of signature verification on absentee ballots. The settlement was published on the website of Mark Elias’s then-law firm, Perkins Coie, a firm heavily involved nationally in fighting to loosen election laws in 2020. The settlement required a total of three election officials to sign off on absentee ballots that could not be signature verified. The settlement also specified the timeframe within which a voter must be notified of their rejected absentee ballot so that the voter had a reasonable opportunity to “cure” the signature issue.
Perdue acknowledged Kemp did not sign the settlement but argued the governor was complacent in the pre-election signature fight.
“By the way, the governor actually didn’t sign the consent decree. My argument with the governor is he didn’t stop it. They didn’t. They didn’t bring it public. They didn’t make this open,” Perdue said.
Gov. Brian Kemp speaks during the Georgia Ports Authority’s Savannah State of the Port event, September 12, 2019, in Savannah, Georgia. (Stephen Morton/Georgia Port Authority via AP)
Another point of criticism against Kemp made by Trump and others was that Kemp did not call a special session after the November election but before the January 5 runoffs so that the state legislature could choose its own separate set of electoral college electors. Kemp argued at the time that the move would have been unconstitutional and “immediately enjoined by the courts.”
Perdue said he too asked Kemp for a special session in November and that he has also asked courts multiple times about the legalities of the special session.
“I asked for a special session in November. I was denied that by our governor. I went to court on three different occasions, was told I didn’t have legal standing. I have filed another suit just yesterday to see if I had legal standing because I want to get at the truth, and we have not done that yet here in Georgia,” Perdue said on Saturday.
The former senator also acknowledged that in “some areas” — such as coronavirus — “I think [Kemp’s] done an okay job,” less Kemp reopening the state after shutdowns a week earlier than Perdue believes the governor should have.
Perdue added, “This is not personal. … I like Brian. It’s just that he can’t win. He has not brought our party together, and if he were going to do that, he would have done it already.”
Write to Ashley Oliver at aoliver@breitbart.com. Follow her on Twitter at @asholiver.
New York City Undermines the Vote
Elections in the U.S. are plagued by problems of integrity. At the very basic level, the country has failed to maintain accurate and current voter rolls. With those on the Left opposed to voter IDs, there’s no way of verifying genuine eligibility. Big Tech sways contests with enhanced social media coverage or censorship, and, more recently, there has been reason to suspect foreign interference. Then there are structural defects which allow manipulation -- the vulnerability of mail-in ballots to vote harvesting, the extension of voting periods weeks before and following official election dates, and the questionable last-minute changes of election law. The list could go on and on.
But now a new threat, perhaps more foreboding than the ones listed, looms over American elections – a new bill that gives non-citizens the right to vote in municipal elections in New York City. The bill has been passed into law, making NYC the 15th among towns and cities with local laws permitting non-citizen voting. Non-citizen suffrage is permitted in 11 municipalities in Maryland and two in Vermont, while San Francisco permits non-citizens to vote in school board elections.
Non-citizens often vote by subterfuge, under the cover of provisions that make it illegal to require an ID for voting. If the New York law allowing aliens to vote goes unchallenged, non-citizens can shed even that fig leaf of deceit. Those who merely hold green cards or temporary work visas will be able to vote openly. Even those who have been lawful permanent residents of the city for 30 days and those with work authorizations will be able to select city officials such as the mayor, city council members, the comptroller, borough presidents and more. Incoming NYC Mayor Eric Adams supports the bill, but according to Republican City Councilman Joseph Borelli, a legal challenge is likely.
The current population of NYC is about 8.5 million. In 2018, it counted 4.6 million registered voters. The 800,000 non-citizens who will be added to the rolls in 2023 will mean a 17% increase in potential voters. With migrant voters favoring the Democrats, this could spur similar measures in Democrat strongholds. The implications for national sovereignty are grave indeed: NYC could well be the critical test case to push for allowing non-citizen residents to eventually vote in state and presidential elections.
That push could begin with the extension of non-citizen voting in many cities across the country, especially in Democrat districts that support the inflow of migrants. The Biden administration has left the border uncontrolled and endorsed weak enforcement of laws against illegal aliens. The stated purpose of such legislations is to “enfranchise” those “who pay taxes and are part of local communities.” But since when does a 30-day stint in a foreign country without the privilege of voting qualify as being “disenfranchised?” In effect, non-citizen suffrage blurs the distinction between citizens and non-citizens; and voting rights, however limited, could be flaunted as a legal claim to citizenship or for hastening the process of obtaining citizenship.
Thankfully, there are a few stumbling blocks to the implementation of the NYC law. The New York State Constitution designates that “every citizen shall be entitled to vote at every election…” So it still remains to be established that non-citizens can summarily be treated as citizens through local laws. Besides, New York state’s Municipal Home Rule Law and the city’s own charter provide for mandatory referendums if certain changes are made to election regulations. There is hope, then, that voters will speak for sovereignty.
Even so, there are many legal complexities, ones the Dems are intent on exploiting to the hilt. NYC has a formal policy of being a “sanctuary” city -- a jurisdiction that does not comply with detainer requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation even when prior arrests and criminal charges have been filed. The new legislation takes the City That Never Sleeps further and faster down the road to lawlessness. Why, under the circumstances, would a non-citizen, despite his illegal status, bother at all to become a legitimate citizen of the U.S.?
Another complication is that federal law forbids non-citizens from voting in federal elections, a crime punishable with a fine, up to one year in prison, deportation, and ineligibility for visas and admission to the U.S. But illegals, who have voted in favor of the Democrats over Republicans in U.S. elections, have done so unchecked in states that allow non-citizens to obtain driving licenses. At the time of license renewal, their names are added to the voter rolls without any attempt to verify their citizenship.
Federal law has also complicated matters by making no pronouncement on state and local elections. This was done in the well-meaning spirit of federalism; however, by not explicitly forbidding non-citizens from voting in any election in the U.S., the field has been left open to attacks of the sort the Democrats, unless countered, are bound to pursue. So far, all 50 states have barred non-citizens from participating in state elections. But local elections are a different game. Cities in 11 states allow illegals to vote at the local level.
This actually encourages illegals. As Rep Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) says, “Extending voting rights to those who are not lawfully present in the United States acts like another incentive for foreign nationals to come to the United States illegally and stay.” The Democrats, particularly those on the Left, with their loose sense of boundaries -- in matters of gender, sexual orientation, or even citizenship -- continue to play this dangerous game of eroding deep-rooted ideas of nationhood.
In 2018, House Republicans passed a non-binding resolution opposing voting by non-citizens in U.S. elections, including in cities where this has been allowed. In a 279-72, vote, there were 49 Democrats who joined Republicans to declare “that allowing illegal immigrants the right to vote devalues the franchise and diminishes the voting power of United States citizens.” This vote took place after San Francisco opened voter registration for school board elections to illegal aliens.
And earlier this year, the Senate defeated S.1, nicknamed “The Corrupt Politicians Act,” which Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) describes as “monstrous” and one that “provides that illegal immigrants who are registered to vote, even though it’s against the law for them to vote, will face no legal liability because they will be automatically registered to vote.” A typically devious Democrat move, in violation of the Constitution. The bill contained provisions prohibiting the correction of voter rolls to remove illegals or the deceased. It also allowed felons to vote, eliminated election integrity laws and voter ID, and mandated ballot harvesting.
Despite such fightbacks, the Left will not cease to hack away at the foundations of American democracy. As Reince Priebus, former chief of staff to President Donald Trump and chairman of the Republican National Committee, tweeted, “The far-left continues to make a mockery of our nation’s democratic process. Voting in U.S. elections should remain a right reserved for American citizens over the age of 18.”
The New York bill perverts the meaning of President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, in which he described our republic as a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Bestowing voting privileges reserved for our countrymen to non-citizens will sabotage our sovereignty and hasten the descent of the great American experiment into the garbage pit of history.
No comments:
Post a Comment