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| President Donald
Trump with Stephen Miller, White House senior advisor for policy Jim
Lo Scalzo—Bloomberg/Getty Images; Andrew Harrer/picture-alliance/dpa/AP |
Robert Reich, always a good read, posted on my newsfeed today:
“On Sunday, White House Senior Advisor Stephen Miller claimed 14 percent of non-citizens are registered to vote. ‘We know for a fact, you have massive numbers of non-citizens registered to vote in this country,’ he said, appearing on ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos. ‘The White House has provided enormous evidence with respect to voter fraud.’
“ABSOLUTE RUBBISH [emphasis mine].
“What do we do when we have a president and White House surrogates, along with enablers in the right-wing media, who continuously lie about something as important to our democracy as whether we’ve got massive voter fraud?
“The answer is we find the truth. We spread the truth. We continue to speak the truth. And we use every chance we have – in opeds, in letters to editors, in local media, on national media – to state the truth.
“And we demand that big lies like this be corrected.
“I’m attaching the most recent report on voter fraud from the Brennan Center. It confirms that multiple nationwide studies have uncovered only a handful of incidents of non-citizens voting. Based on state prosecution records, votes by non-citizens account for between 0.0003 percent and 0.001 percent of all votes cast.
“Election officials agree that there is no serious problem of non-citizen voting in our elections. The National Association of Secretaries of State, whose Republican-majority membership includes the chief elections officers of 40 states, said they ‘are not aware of any evidence that supports the voter fraud claims made by President Trump.’
“Federal law and the law of every state prohibit non-citizens from registering to vote or voting in elections (save for a few municipalities that allow non-citizen residents to vote in local elections). Experts believe that the severity of the penalties for violating these laws serve as a significant deterrent.
“Also, it is relatively easy for a non-citizen to get caught.
“One of the most important common goods we possess is the truth about our democracy. Trump is pulverizing that truth. This is beyond shameful.”
“On Sunday, White House Senior Advisor Stephen Miller claimed 14 percent of non-citizens are registered to vote. ‘We know for a fact, you have massive numbers of non-citizens registered to vote in this country,’ he said, appearing on ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos. ‘The White House has provided enormous evidence with respect to voter fraud.’
“ABSOLUTE RUBBISH [emphasis mine].
“What do we do when we have a president and White House surrogates, along with enablers in the right-wing media, who continuously lie about something as important to our democracy as whether we’ve got massive voter fraud?
“The answer is we find the truth. We spread the truth. We continue to speak the truth. And we use every chance we have – in opeds, in letters to editors, in local media, on national media – to state the truth.
“And we demand that big lies like this be corrected.
“I’m attaching the most recent report on voter fraud from the Brennan Center. It confirms that multiple nationwide studies have uncovered only a handful of incidents of non-citizens voting. Based on state prosecution records, votes by non-citizens account for between 0.0003 percent and 0.001 percent of all votes cast.
“Election officials agree that there is no serious problem of non-citizen voting in our elections. The National Association of Secretaries of State, whose Republican-majority membership includes the chief elections officers of 40 states, said they ‘are not aware of any evidence that supports the voter fraud claims made by President Trump.’
“Federal law and the law of every state prohibit non-citizens from registering to vote or voting in elections (save for a few municipalities that allow non-citizen residents to vote in local elections). Experts believe that the severity of the penalties for violating these laws serve as a significant deterrent.
“Also, it is relatively easy for a non-citizen to get caught.
“One of the most important common goods we possess is the truth about our democracy. Trump is pulverizing that truth. This is beyond shameful.”
Wendy R. Weiser, Douglas Keith
