I have always thought it hypocritical at best for the Motor Voter Law to require states to register illegals to vote as they get their driver licenses. Yes, the person must check a box that he/she is a citizen, but there is no further checking. To get a driver’s license, however, the state must require a license applicant to either prove he/she is a citizen by a predetermined set of documents, or, if not a citizen, prove he/she is here legally by producing pre-determined documents. In other words, the state licensing personnel know by the documents produced by the actual license applicant whether he/she is a citizen or not. 

Federal law clearly states that only citizens can vote in federal elections. All states have similar laws for state elections. The dichotomy described above is ripe for wrongdoing. What is the purpose of signing a non-citizen up to vote, when the very office that is doing so knows for certain that he/she is not a citizen? Voting by such a person would be a crime.

Yet, the Left opposes every effort to prevent voter identification laws to verify identity of voters. Fortunately, there is a better way that will not only identify the voter, which in itself does not stop an illegal vote by a non-citizen, but which could prevent non-citizens from voting at all. The data to do so already exists for many people.

When someone gets a driver’s license their photo is taken, and it appears on the license. The driver’s license bureaus also know whether that person is a citizen or not, despite what may have been represented in the Motor Voter documents. Why not simply have the licensing bureaus send the photos and whether or not the person is a citizen directly to the various voting registrars? With today’s technology, a poll worker would be able to visually confirm if the potential voter is who he/she purports to be, plus whether that person is a citizen entitled to vote. This would not require the voter to produce a single thing, thus negating the Left’s argument that it is somehow too difficult for minorities to get photo ID’s.

Further, the FBI proudly announced recently that it has now deployed its multi-billion dollar facial recognition system. If they have not already done so, a quick scan of driver’s license photo should enable the system to identity people easily, otherwise what is the purpose of such a system? A quick photo scan at the initial polling desk where ID is supposed to be confirmed would enable the system to confirm identity. Not knowing how long the system takes, perhaps for now only those whose identity is in question need be run through the system, presuming honest poll workers, of course.  Such a system could also prevent a person voting more than once in different states, or at least significantly raise the risk factor.

If getting photos to the polling places is problematic for any reason, there would appear to be no reason why the states cannot provide the voting registrars with a list of those who were issued licenses as non-citizens.  With that information, the voting registrars can purge the voting lists of those thus shown to be ineligible to vote.

The bottom line is that the integrity of the vote is paramount to our system of government. The Left is never going to approve of photo ID requirements or other ways to reduce or prevent voting fraud. We may already have the tools in place to actually go a step beyond what photo ID laws would provide, and that is hard data as to whether a person is legally entitled to vote, not just whether they are actually the name on a voting list. Let’s get the IT guys to work and implement this wherever possible.