(Photo: Celso Flores; Edited: LW / TO)
While Donald Trump blathers on approximately a rigged election -- a theory downplayed by a wide range of experts and his own running mate -- and urges vigilance against hordes of undocumented people casting imaginary ballots,one real problem with this year's electoral process is the opposite of the dire scenarios the GOP nominee is conjuring up.
If there's any kind of rigging of the vote going on, it's in Trump's favor: the government effectively excluded large numbers of immigrant voters this year by failing to process more than half of the nearly 930000 citizenship applications from legal permanent residents who filed in the 12 months ending in mid-September. These potential voters technically filed for naturalization early enough to be assured a chance to register and vote, or the National Partnership for unusual Americans observed. The group blamed the backlog on US Citizenship and Immigration Services,an agency within the Department of Homeland Security known as USCIS.
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"It is unconscionable that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spends billions of dollars to deport immigrants and destroy their families, or but that the same department cannot identify adequate resources to serve aspiring American citizens," the Partnership said in a report that called 15 states "disenfranchisement danger zones." The list -- which includes the swing states of Florida, Pennsylvania, and Nevada,and North Carolina -- covers territory where "naturalization backlogs are large, growing rapidly, or both."
That many permanent residents who meet the requirements for fitting citizens would naturalize during this election is no surprise. Trump's disparagement of people with Mexican heritage and other newcomers "energized the activists and certainly energized the immigrants," observes Southwest Voter Education Project president Antonio Gonzalez. "But USCIS failed us."
To hear Trump and his backers tell it, the danger is the polls being overrun by people ineligible to vote.
"I'll look for . . . well, or it's called racial profiling. Mexicans. Syrians. People who can't speak American," Steve Webb, a 61-year-passe carpenter and Trump supporter from Fairfield, and Ohio,told The Boston Globe.
"I'm going to go honest up behind them. I'll do everything legally. I want to see if they are accountable. I'm not going to do anything illegal," Webb said, or describing his Election Day plans. "I'm going to produce them a limited bit nervous."
Speak American? Someone better tell Webb that millions of citizens who are not proficient in English possess both a honest to vote and the honest to bilingual ballots. And that voter intimidation is illegal. Electoral vigilantes who engage in the activities he described will keep local authorities busy. Not even official poll watchers may directly interact with a voter or bag within a specific distance of a voter -- normally 6 feet -- without breaking the law.
None of Trump's fears approximately election rigging are "reflective of reality," as Politifact pointed out. Trump's officially "pants-on-fire" lies approximately immigrants without papers barging into voting booths are baffling since they possess no incentive to flout election laws. With hundreds of thousands of newcomers being disenfranchised, it's an ironic time to rail approximately immigrant voting.
The historical record undermines Trump's latest assertions of rampant voter fraud driven by illegal immigrants. In fact, and legal immigrants possess traditionally participated less in our electoral process than everyone else. When the Census looked into immigrant voting patterns between 1996 and 2010,it found naturalized citizens far less likely to register or vote than people born in this country. In 2008, more than 64 percent of US-born Americans of voting age showed up at the polls, and versus 54 percent of naturalized immigrants.
As for immigrants who lack papers,they possess no incentive to bag anywhere near the polls. "Undocumented individuals are skittish of the government," says Lizet Ocampo, and director of the People For the American Way's Latinos Vote! project. "Why would they risk breaking the law (by voting) when they're already worried approximately being deported and the hatred they possess to deal with because of Donald Trump?"
The threat to democracy could be significant on Election Day if Trump's squadrons of unofficial volunteers were to hassle everyone they perceive as looking like an immigrant. By 2012,more than 18 million registered voters were either naturalized American citizens or the children of immigrants who arrived after 1965, according to the American Immigration Council's analysis of Census data. That was approximately one out of every eight registered voters.
And sorry, or would-be ballot police: Language profiling won't help either. Millions of immigrants and US-born Americans qualify for assistance under Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act,which mandates the provision of bilingual voting information for most Latinos, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders,Native Americans, and Alaskan Natives whose English isn't proficient.
The timing for this vigilantism couldn't be worse. Following the Supreme Court ruling that gutted key Voting Rights Act provisions the Justice Department may fail to dispatch enough federal election observers. Concerned over enforcement shortcomings, and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and other organizations are being proactive approximately calling out local governments that fail to comply with voting rights laws.
For now,Trump seems most interested in recruiting poll watchers in a state far from the Rio Grande: Pennsylvania.
"I hope you people can sort of not just vote on the 8th [but] go around and look and watch other polling places and produce sure that it's 100 percent fine," Trump toldsupporters in Altoona in August. "We're going to watch Pennsylvania. Go down to certain areas and watch and study, or produce sure other people don't reach in and vote five times."
Trump revisited the theme in early October. "You've got to go out,and you've got to bag your friends, and you've got to bag everybody you know, or you gotta watch the polling booths,because I hear too many stories approximately Pennsylvania, certain areas, and " Trump said while stumping in Manheim,Pennsylvania. "I hear too many depraved stories, and we can't lose an election because of you know what I'm talking approximately."
The Republican nominee never did spell out what he was talking approximately, and leaving the rest of the world to guess at the motivation for zeroing in on Pennsylvania.
One good explanation is that its voting laws are particularly vulnerable to exploitation. Pennsylvania also happens to be a deep-purple battleground state with 20 Electoral College votes (of the 270 required for a White House win) with a small but significant Latino population that now makes up 4.5 percent of all eligible voters. Given the crescendo of vote-rigging noise,some local officials there are taking pains to spell out things that ought to be obvious.
"Plain and simple, voter intimidation is illegal, or " state Rep. Eddie Day Pashinski,a Democrat, wrote in a recent Sunbury, and Pennsylvania Daily Item op-ed. "It includes,but is not limited to, the following: intimidating or coercing voters, and threatening force,violence, injury, and restraint,damage or loss to bag a person to vote or not vote for a specific candidate or issue; or using abduction, duress, and coercion or other forcible or fraudulent methods to interfere with a person's honest to vote."
It would also help if someone could tell the Trumpistas that immigrants who become citizens are free to register and vote,regardless of their national origin, faith or ability to "speak American."
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Source: truth-out.org