Greg Gutfeld, cohost of The Five and resident wit at Fox News, thinks that the scandals swirling around D.C. right now are so bad that Congress should be grounded for a year.  That's right -- no new laws, no initiatives, no nothin' until Congress straightens out what they've already screwed up.  This is a brilliant idea, because after the monster laws shoved down the throats of unwilling Americans for the last five years, America needs a breather.  And this is especially the case with the comprehensive immigration reform bill currently being considered by "the world's [feeblest] deliberative body," the U.S. Senate.

We should be leery about anything "comprehensive."  But supporters of the Senate bill assure us that there will be all manner of safeguards in it and that there will be certain triggers that must be met before the millions of illegal aliens already here can be made citizens.  If you believe that, then read this recent editorial at National Review.  But I'd like to address an aspect of the bill that has received far too little attention, and that's the effect of comprehensive immigration reform on the integrity of our elections.

Under the new immigration bill, the 11,000,000 or so foreigners now here illegally will be "legalized."  And despite having to wait for years to become full citizens, they will nonetheless end up on voter registries across America.  Even though non-citizens can't legally vote in America, they'll be encouraged to register.  And with the Supreme Court's June 17 decision in Arizona v. Inter Tribal of Arizona Inc., there'll little to stop them.

The upshot of the Court's ruling is that voter registrars can't demand proof that a registrant is a citizen.  Once you get on a registry, you can vote.  When I started writing about election fraud a few years back, there was only one state, Arizona, which made any attempt to verify American citizenship of voter registrants.  And now, that's been dashed to hell by the high court, the SCOTUS, the Supremes...the End of the Line.

I'm sorry to have to report this, but the real purpose of the Senate's immigration bill, the version pushed by Chuck Schumer, is to make voting by illegals possible.  If it weren't, they'd do something about the wide open voter registration systems in America.  No patriot should support any immigration reform bill that does not include measures that would make it "physically" impossible for non-citizens to vote.

On June 18, the lead story on the front page of the wood pulp version of the Kansas City Star dealt with the Court's ruling on Monday.  Posted online the day before by Steve Kraske, the article explored the effect of the Court's ruling on Kansas's new requirement for citizenship verification of new voters.  The article ends thus:

Louis Goseland, a coordinator with the Wichita-based KanVote Coalition, which is working to repeal the Kansas law, said the problem with requiring a birth certificate is that there is hardly any voter fraud to target in Kansas.

He said more people are turned away from casting ballots as a result of the law than there are cases of voter fraud in the state.

"Our main problem is these are solutions in search of a problem," Goseland said. "It's really about making voting more difficult for some people."

This is pathetic; Goseland has no idea of how much voter fraud occurs in Kansas.  If he did, then he would put a number on it and demonstrate how he arrived at that number.  Goseland repeats the standard lie of progressives about election integrity.

The new requirement in Kansas for voter registrants to prove their citizenship is the brainchild of Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state.  Kobach is something of a bête noire for progressives because of his involvement with Arizona.  And as it happens, there were protests outside his Wyandotte County home on Monday.  But none of the reforms by the states, such as photo ID requirements, are going to stop election fraud.  (To learn how to stop it, go here, read the article, and take the links at the bottom.)

The entire purpose of comprehensive immigration reform is to lock in a permanent Democrat majority.  Unable to win on the battlefield of ideas, Democrats want to steal victory by importing recruits -- a new constituency.  That this new constituency will enlarge the underclass is of little importance to Democrats; the important thing is that the imports will vote for the party that hands out the free goodies.

But regardless of whether millions of illegals are able to "come out of the shadows" because of immigration reform, the Supreme Court has just made it easier for them to vote under the current state of affairs.  But even if the Court had upheld the Arizona law, non-citizens would still find it easy to vote under the Senate's immigration bill.

The most recent proposal that successfully found its way into the Constitution was Amendment XXVI -- it took less than four months from passage by the Congress to ratification.  The next (and last) amendment had been passed by Congress almost 203 years before being ratified.  I mention the haste with which the 26^th was done because it was a Democrat amendment, and it gave kids the right to vote.  (If they thought they could get away with it, Democrats would extend the franchise to newborns.)

Everything the Democrats do is to increase voter participation -- participation by kids, felons, old folks, folks in comas, illegal aliens, whatever, just vote Democrat.  The integrity of elections is of no concern to them; all they worry about is locking in a permanent majority.  And now, with comprehensive immigration reform, they are attempting to import an electorate.

Under Harry Reid, the U.S. Senate is the worst ever.  Decent GOP senators shouldn't vote for anything pushed by Reid and his ilk unless it is exactly right.  In other words: without comprehensive election reform, comprehensive immigration reform should be summarily rejected.  Unless it can be demonstrated that there will be safeguards that prevent the newly legalized from voting, the Senate immigration bill should die a dog's death.

Regarding election integrity, America is a banana republic, and always has been.  And there is no excuse for it in this high-tech age.  Americans should join together and say to the U.S. Senate: you're grounded.

Jon N. Hall is a programmer/analyst from Kansas City.