It’s No Joke at the Border: America’s Largest Ever Voter Drive

Comedian Sid Caesar once observed that “humor must be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end.” True to form, the satire news site Babylon Bee recently posted a bold headline, “Biden Deploys 1500 Troops at Border to Help Register New Voters.”

It’s both funny and sobering because it artfully reveals the very obvious impetus behind Biden’s open borders; admitting massive numbers of migrants to perpetuate the left’s voting base.

No, they’re not eligible to cast ballots in national elections yet because federal law prohibits it, but allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections is expanding and it’s a first step to the next. Unless a state’s constitution expressly denies it — and 7 currently don’t — local municipalities are free to pass their own voter qualification standards which dozens of jurisdictions in California, Maryland and Vermont have already done.

In so doing, they are decimating principle. Requiring citizenship to vote is embedded in our national culture, in our school textbooks, enshrined as a primary civic premise, and helps foster national identity. There’s a process, one that works, and by the way, it’s for legal immigrants only. The five-year waiting period, followed by the option to become naturalized, allows immigrants time to gain knowledge of our society and develop a stake in it. Understanding, respecting, and having an allegiance to our history, values, traditions, customs, language and laws, and a willingness to become part of our national community, strengthens our country and creates stronger bonds between citizens.

All nations have a right to define their standards of membership, including the right to reserve voting only for citizens, asking immigrants to demonstrate their commitment to our society, and assuring they can be trusted with helping make decisions. The “probationary-naturalization” period allows that. 

Handing out voting privileges like free movie tickets demeans citizenship and waters down the very thing which many law-abiding immigrants aspire to the most: American citizenship.

But that doesn’t matter to the open-borders left because the impact of local voting rights for non-citizens is significant, particularly if the goal is to influence national politics. More than 80 percent of current U.S. House of Representative members launched their political careers locally as elected mayors, state reps, or other government officials.  In effect, local voting selects the farm team for eventual national leadership positions. 

More importantly, if the concept of citizenship-only voting is no longer integral at the local level, then why not ignore it for national elections? Those intent on erasing any distinction between citizens and noncitizens depend on this sort of incrementalism.  In fact, systematically altering the electorate and influencing elections at every level has been their motive for some time. In 2010 Eliseo Medina, then Executive Vice President of the influential and far-left Service Employees International Union, candidly proclaimed that, “by way of immigration we will be creating a governing coalition for the long term, not just for the election cycle.” Mathematically he was right, given increasingly slim margins in national elections. The last nine presidential elections have averaged popular vote differences of about 5.3 million with average margins of about 4.6 percent. Thus, the potential enfranchisement of 15.5 million illegal aliens  (with many more arriving every day), could determine the outcomes of future elections. Seen in this light, the left’s desire to scrap America’s Electoral College and instead have popular votes dictate outcomes makes sense.

What’s to be done, especially with millions more illegal aliens entering post Title-42?  Only seven states specify in their constitution that noncitizens may not vote in state and local elections. Clearly, citizens of those states need to hold the line, while 43 others need to influence lawmakers to proactively amend their state constitutions.

To further the political ambitions of his far-left base, Biden has orchestrated a humanitarian crisis causing terrible harm to both Americans and migrants. It’s deplorable, and the very definition of tyranny. That said, it can be partially neutralized if citizenship-only voting is preserved.