OPINION:
The great American voter purge is happening, and it’s a good thing. It appears to be happening in places where they appear to care more than others about securing our elections. It is at once a sign that there are those in government willing to address the threat to the integrity of our democratic process and an exposition of the willful degrading of our system by the Democratic Party.
Self-proclaimed experts have attempted for years to tell Americans that our voter rolls are not riddled with dead people, duplicate registrations, inactive voters, voters who moved to other states and noncitizens.
This alleged fantasy, cooked up by former President Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans, is a truth Democrats ignore.
Last month, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced that over 1.1 million people had been taken off the state’s voter rolls since 2021. Of those, 40% are dead, nearly 20,000 canceled their own voter registration, 6,000 can no longer vote because of a felony conviction and 6,500 were noncitizens. And 463,000 were removed because county elections officials couldn’t verify they lived at the address connected with the registration.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt’s office reports that nearly half a million ineligible voters have been purged from the state’s rolls since 2021. Of the 453,000 removed, 97,000 are deceased, 56,000 were felons, 15,000 were duplicate registrations, 195,000 did not verify their address and 144,000 had moved out of state. This is astronomical, considering that Oklahoma has a population of only 3.7 million.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration removed more than 6,000 noncitizens from the state’s voter rolls. In August, he signed executive orders requiring paper ballots, offline tabulation machines and daily voter roll maintenance. Democrats filed a federal lawsuit against the state this week to challenge these changes.
Alabama also found thousands of noncitizens on its rolls. The Biden-Harris Justice Department is suing the state to prevent them from stripping those illegal voters from the rolls, as well.
Republicans in over a dozen states, including Georgia and Florida, have been advancing election integrity reforms. They’re taking the necessary action to ensure greater election integrity, though without paper ballots, voter ID and analog voting systems, it may all still fall short.
Democratic-run states are a different matter. Since Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, signed automatic voter registration into law as part of his “Driver’s License for All” bill, 65,000 voters have joined the rolls. Still, the secretary of state there has been accused of slow-rolling efforts to remove voters who haven’t provided citizenship documentation.
California just banned voter identification. Many other Democrats have merely driven the message that racist Republicans want to disenfranchise voters.
The National Voter Registration Act, itself of dubious constitutionality, prevents voter list maintenance efforts that occur within 90 days of an election. The law also legalized automatic registration, or what is known as the “motor voter” law, now utilized in 24 states, including every swing state except Arizona.
House Speaker Mike Johnson and Mr. Trump want the law reformed to protect against abuse. Democrats have overwhelmingly opposed the legislation that would help prevent illegals and ineligible voters from registering.
Continuous voter roll maintenance is critical, particularly to secure the vote in places with heavy mail-in voting. California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia, allow all elections to be conducted entirely by mail, meaning ballots are mailed to everyone on the rolls. Citizens there should demand reforms or consider moving to states where elections will be free, fair and legal.
Democrats and their advocates in the media love telling Americans that there is little evidence of noncitizen voting or other systemic fraud. But with over 10 million immigrants having crossed the border illegally in the last three years, their claims cannot possibly reflect reality.
In places that have an overlap of upticks in illegal immigration, automatic voter registration laws, same-day registration and a high volume of mail-in ballots, scrutiny of voter rolls is necessary. The leftist political ecosystem in this country will stop at nothing to exploit voter rolls in places where the elections are expected to come down to a margin of victory of less than 1%.
Democrats have exposed themselves in the last decade for being controlled by the extremists on the far left who care about their control more than our freedom.
Their consistent opposition to voter roll maintenance and other election integrity reforms is about more than just winning elections. It’s about the intentional destruction of confidence in our entire system and the long-term implications of a public that no longer trusts our elections.
Degrading our system means fewer independent voters, a bribed electorate and the degrading of American strength and freedom. That’s their real, sad, insidious and dangerous objective.
• Tom Basile is the host of “America Right Now” on Newsmax TV and a columnist with The Washington Times.
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