More than 5,000 illegal aliens were registered to vote in Virginia over the last ten years, according to a study by the Public Interest Legal Foundation.
Fairfax County, Virginia’s largest jurisdiction, had the most noncitizens found on the rolls, with more than 1,000. Prince William County was second with 523, and Virginia Beach City was third with 517.
The PILF said those numbers could be just a fraction of the problem because those numbers reflect only noncitizens who admitted to state officials that they weren’t legally able to vote.
Noncitizens are not supposed to register, but many of them do anyway because U.S. laws are designed to encourage high voter turnout. The National Voter Registration Act, dubbed “Motor Voter,” required states to offer voter registration at places where government officials are likely to encounter citizens, such as motor vehicle bureaus. As a result, some illegal aliens are registered to vote when they get driver’s license.
The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, created by President Donald Trump, is investigating possible voter fraud by illegal aliens who are ineligible to vote in federal elections.
“The Department of Homeland Security knows of the millions of aliens who are in the United States legally and that’s data that’s never been bounced against the states’ voter rolls to see whether these people are registered,” said Kris Kobach, Kansas Secretary of State, who is co-chair of the commmission.
“So, one thing that’s never been done before, that I alluded to earlier, is the Department of Homeland Security has a database of all known aliens, green card holders, temporary visas holders in the United States. And that has never been bounced against a state’s voter rolls to say well, hey, how many of these people, with this name, this date of birth, so you can get an exact match. How many of them are registered to vote in state A or state B?” said Kobach.
The study by PILF in Virginia was independent of the commission’s work, but its findings highlighted that the problem is real and measurable, said John Vinson, President of American Immigration Control Foundation.