It's not hard to speculate that the Biden administration sees a Democratic vote for every illegal who crosses the border and receives free services and hopes of a better life upon arrival. The argument can be made that it's a chance to cement Democrats in power at the federal level – and that the two major parties have opposing stances on what has become a hot-button election issue.
An attorney and senior legal fellow for the Conservative Partnership Institute said on American Family Radio Thursday that despite the 2024 elections being only a few months away, there are ways around voter registration that allow enough illegal immigrants to register and make an impact.
Cleta Mitchell told show host Jenna Ellis there's a great chance that many of the millions of illegals who have crossed the border since Biden took office will vote this November. She explained that the fact those individuals don't currently meet the citizenship requirement isn't an automatic deterrent because of so many flaws in the system.
"It's a huge threat because of court decisions – including the U.S. Supreme Court – and actions that Congress has taken over the last 30 years," Mitchell said.
Biden's border has sped up things, but Mitchell points to President Bill Clinton's "Motor Voter" legislation as the tip of the spear in a decades-old plan.
"It was Bill Clinton's number-one priority when he became president – the first bill [H.R.1]. You'll notice that whenever the Democrats take over Congress or a state legislature, the first thing they do, the first bill, is always something to do with political process, with elections. They want to change the rules for elections to try to manipulate the process so that they can have a better chance to win. That happens. We see that pattern repeating itself over and over again," Mitchell emphasized.
Motor Voter's official name was the National Voter Registration Act. It allows citizens to register to vote when they are issued a driver's license, and extends to virtually all contact where federal employees "service" the public: welfare offices, medical facilities, drug-addiction treatment centers and more.
According to The Heritage Foundation, the law also makes it harder for states to remove potentially ineligible or inactive voters and requires states to maintain "clean" voter rolls through the implementation of a voter list maintenance program.
President George H.W. Bush vetoed a similar bill in 1992 with concerns that such a process was bound to suffer corruption. He's since been proven right, Mitchell says.
"We've seen in state after state over the last number of years people check a box saying, 'I'm not a U.S. citizen,' but they get registered to vote anyway. Their [DMV] registrations are then sent to the election offices, and once they're registered it's virtually impossible to keep those individuals from voting."
Mitchell added that in Georgia the law includes an "opt-out" process which means a person getting a driver's license or any other business with the DMV is automatically registered to vote unless they verbally express a desire not to be registered.
"That's something the Left has been pushing for a long time – and now they're on a roll," the attorney said.
Driver's licenses aren't difficult to obtain
Currently, 19 states offer driver's licenses to illegals. "They can present those [as identification], and if it doesn't show any indication that they're not a citizen they can vote," Mitchell said.
Twenty states offer voter certification with some level of student ID card.
"You can be a foreign student and not a U.S. citizen and have a student ID," Mitchell continued. "There are so many ways that non-citizens are registered, particularly by these left-wing NGOs [non-governmental organizations] or advocacy groups. It's a very real threat."
Mitchell blames inaction from Congress that she says has led to a voter registration system as porous as the border itself. "Congress needs to take some action to tighten up some of these federal laws that make it very difficult for states to be able to ask people to present proof of citizenship in order to register to vote," she urged.
Congress isn't the only obstacle to secure registration. In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down an Arizona law that required its residents to provide proof of citizenship before being allowed to register. Arizona defended its law as a safeguard for election integrity but striking it down wasn't a hard call for most of the justices, in a 7-2 count, as they decided it violated Clinton's Motor Voter act.
"I suppose the Supreme Court didn't realize we would be invaded at our southern border," Mitchell said.
Angry Democrats two decades ago
Mitchell testified before the House Judiciary Committee in 2001 about the importance of election integrity as Congress considered changes to laws after the contested presidential election of 2000 between George W. Bush and Al Gore. Her testimony was met with anger from Democrats.
"Maxine Waters and Barney Frank both yelled at me and told me from the dais that voter registration is racist and if you support that then you're a racist. That was 23 years ago," she recalled.
"The legislatures have the constitutional responsibility to determine the time, place, and manner of elections, and it's up to the legislatures to decide what the qualifications are," the attorney concluded. "What the Left has done, they want to take all voting outside of accountability, oversight and transparency."
