A research
group in New Jersey has taken a fresh look at postelection polling data and
concluded that the number of noncitizens voting illegally in U.S. elections is
likely far greater than previous estimates.
As many as
5.7 million noncitizens may have voted in the 2008 election, which put Barack
Obama in the White House.
The research
organization Just Facts, a widely cited, independent think tank led by
self-described conservatives and libertarians, revealed its number-crunching in
a report on national immigration.
Just Facts
President James D. Agresti and his team looked at
data from an extensive Harvard/YouGov study that every two years questions a
sample size of tens of thousands of voters. Some acknowledge they are
noncitizens and are thus ineligible to vote.
Just Facts’
conclusions confront both sides in the illegal voting debate: those who say it
happens a lot and those who say the problem nonexistent.
In one camp,
there are groundbreaking studies by professors at Old Dominion University in
Virginia who attempted to compile scientifically derived illegal voting numbers
using the Harvard data, called the Cooperative Congressional Election Study.
On the other
side are the professors who conducted the study and contended that “zero”
noncitizens of about 18 million adults in the U.S. voted. The liberal
mainstream media adopted this position and proclaimed the Old Dominion work was
“debunked.”
The ODU
professors, who stand by their work in the face of attacks from the left,
concluded that in 2008 as few as 38,000 and as many as 2.8 million noncitizens
voted.
Mr. Agresti’s analysis of the same polling
data settled on much higher numbers. He estimated that as many as 7.9 million
noncitizens were illegally registered that year and 594,000 to 5.7 million
voted.
These numbers are more in line with the unverified estimates
given by President Trump, who said the number of ballots cast by noncitizens
was the reason he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton.
Last month,
the president signed an executive order setting up a commission to try to find
on-the-ground truth in illegal voting. Headed by Vice President Mike Pence, the
panel also will look at outdated voter lists across the nation with names of
dead people and multiple registrants.
For 2012,
Just Facts said, 3.2 million to 5.6 million noncitizens were registered to vote
and 1.2 million to 3.6 million of them voted.
Mr. Agresti lays out his reasoning in a
series of complicated calculations, which he compares to U.S. Census Bureau
figures for noncitizen residents. Polls show noncitizens vote overwhelmingly
Democratic.
“The details
are technical, but the figure I calculated is based on a more conservative
margin of sampling error and a methodology that I consider to be more
accurate,” Mr. Agresti told The Washington Times.
He believes
the Harvard/YouGov researchers based their “zero” claim on two flawed
assumptions. First, they assumed that people who said they voted and identified
a candidate did not vote unless their names showed up in a database.
“This is
illogical, because such databases are unlikely to verify voters who use
fraudulent identities, and millions of noncitizens use them,” Mr. Agresti said.
He cites
government audits that show large numbers of noncitizens use false IDs and
Social Security numbers in order to function in the U.S., which could include
voting.
Second,
Harvard assumed that respondent citizens sometimes misidentified themselves as
noncitizens but also concluded that noncitizens never misidentified themselves
as citizens, Mr. Agresti said.
“This is
irrational, because illegal immigrants often claim they are citizens in order
to conceal the fact that they are in the U.S. illegally,” he said.
Some of the
polled noncitizens denied they were registered to vote when publicly available
databases show that they were, he said.
This
conclusion, he said, is backed by the Harvard/YouGov study’s findings of
consumer and vote data matches for 90 percent of participants but only 41
percent of noncitizen respondents.
As to why his
numbers are higher than the besieged ODU professors’ study, Mr. Agresti said: “I calculated the
margin of sampling error in a more cautious way to ensure greater confidence in
the results, and I used a slightly different methodology that I think is more
accurate.”
There is hard
evidence outside of polling that noncitizens do vote. Conservative activists
have conducted limited investigations in Maryland and Virginia that found
thousands of aliens were registered.
These
inquiries, such as comparing noncitizen jury pool rejections to voter rolls,
captured just a snapshot. But conservatives say they show there is a much
broader problem that a comprehensive probe by the Pence commission could
uncover.
The Public
Interest Legal Foundation, which fights voter fraud, released one of its most
comprehensive reports last month.
Its
investigation found that Virginia removed more than 5,500 noncitizens from
voter lists, including 1,852 people who had cast more than 7,000 ballots. The
people volunteered their status, most likely when acquiring driver’s licenses.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation said there are likely many more illegal
voters on Virginia’s rolls who have never admitted to being noncitizens.
