September 19, 2012 at 1:00 am
Secretary of State: 4K noncitizens on voter rolls

    By Chad Livengood
Lansing — One day after being sued over a controversial ballot box citizenship question, Secretary of State Ruth Johnson said Tuesday there are an estimated 4,000 noncitizens on Michigan's voter rolls.

The estimate is based on the state's access to citizenship information for one-fifth of the population, Johnson said, adding the federal government won't give her access to more citizenship data.

Johnson said the results of a "very tedious" analysis of 58,000 driver's licenses and state-issued identification cards found 963 noncitizens registered to vote.

Department of State employees cross-referenced those noncitizens with voting records and found 54 have a voting history and have voted a total of 95 times, Johnson said.

Using census estimates that 305,000 noncitizens live in Michigan, Johnson's office extrapolated that 5,064 could be noncitizens and then lowered its estimate to 4,000 to account for children, spokeswoman Gisgie Gendreau said.

Johnson said the discovery justifies her insistence that Michigan's 7.34 million registered voters be asked to affirm their citizenship if they vote at the polls in November. The daughter of a Canadian immigrant, Johnson said the citizenship question is necessary because over the years noncitizens have been automatically registered to vote while legally obtaining a driver's license.

"We have a problem. We need to fix it," Johnson told The Detroit News. "Denying and minimizing it doesn't get the job done."

A group of voting rights advocates, labor unions and citizens sued Johnson in federal court Monday, challenging her authority to ask voters to affirm their citizenship after Gov. Rick Snyder vetoed legislation adding the question to absentee and in-person voting applications.

The plaintiffs say the question is redundant because voters affirm their citizenship when they register to vote and say the question is an ineffective way to root out potential voter fraud.

"If someone is legitimately trying to misrepresent themselves as a citizen in order to interfere with our elections, then what's to say they won't misrepresent themselves a second time at the ballot box," said election attorney Jocelyn Benson, who was Johnson's 2010 Democratic opponent.

Benson said Johnson's office should remove the noncitizens from the voter rolls rather than "using fear and xenophobia" with the citizenship inquiry at the polls.

Johnson, a Republican, also implied President Barack Obama and Democratic county and city clerks are obstructing her efforts to root out noncitizen voters. She specifically noted her office found 80 noncitizens registered to vote in Macomb County, where County Clerk Carmella Sabaugh, a Democrat, has said she won't let the citizenship question appear on applications to vote.

"I don't think anybody wants noncitizens to vote no matter what their party affiliation to vote," Johnson said.

Sabaugh questioned Johnson's data and wanted to know whether the Secretary of State's Office has notified the noncitizens on the voter rolls that it's a felony for them to vote.

"If she sees this as a real big problem, then I think she needs to look at her branch offices" where people register to vote, Sabaugh told The News. "I don't know if we can trust these numbers."

The state Bureau of Elections is "working to remove anyone who is not a qualified voter from the rolls," Gendreau said.

Johnson, a former Oakland County clerk, said she's been "turned away" by the Social Security Administration and U.S. Department of Homeland Security in four attempts to verify the citizenship of all registered voters.

"I think the best way is for this administration to do their job and that's to help us get noncitizens off the voter rolls," Johnson said.

Johnson's late afternoon news release contained statements of support from Oakland County Clerk Bill Bullard Jr.; state Sen. Darwin Booher, R-Evart; and Rep. Pete Lund, R-Shelby Township.

"We know that noncitizens have been invited to register to vote for decades with many doing so,whether they've done it intentionally or not," Lund said in a statement. "Putting noncitizens on notice that casting a ballot is a serious crime is a simple, common-sense solution to this problem."

Citing her general authority to prescribe election forms, Johnson first added the citizenship question to ballot applications in the February Republican presidential primary.

After that contest, Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Mark Brewer filed a Freedom of Information Act with Johnson's office to see how many noncitizens were caught voting in the GOP primary. Johnson's office said four of the 1.2 million may have been noncitizens, according to Brewer.

From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120919/POLITICS01/209190348#ixzz26ux8FZMF

Quoted from Shadow

Lansing — One day after being sued over a controversial ballot box citizenship question, Secretary of State Ruth Johnson said Tuesday there are an estimated 4,000 noncitizens on Michigan's voter rolls.

When other cases like this have made news, citizens are rightfully angry at the situation.  When the issue
is looked into further, it often occurs that most of these Non-Citizen lists are decades old.  In Florida, the
lists were over 10 years old with most of the listed names are now citizens.

Quoted from Box A Rox

When other cases like this have made news, citizens are rightfully angry at the situation.  When the issue
is looked into further, it often occurs that most of these Non-Citizen lists are decades old.  In Florida, the
lists were over 10 years old with most of the listed names are now citizens.

Having a government paid universal photo ID program would eliminate all argument. These ID's should be able to be obtained at any government office.... Social services, DMV, court system, etc.

Quoted from 55tbird

Having a government paid universal photo ID program would eliminate all argument. These ID's should be able to be obtained at any government office.... Social services, DMV, court system, etc.

Do you think the best time for a brand new Voter ID Program is 3 or 4 months before a Presidential election???
Apparently the Republicans do.

We must not stop the undocumented Democrats from voting.

Quoted from Box A Rox

Do you think the best time for a brand new Voter ID Program is 3 or 4 months before a Presidential election???
Apparently the Republicans do.

No, but this issue has been on the burner for a while and will go away until the next big national election in 2014...The pubs will want it but with restrictions on where you can get the Id's and the Dems will no such ID program at all, and in four years we will be at the same place.

Quoted from Shadow

"We must not stop the undocumented Democrats from voting."

But not the undocumented Republicans!  

Stop them both but there are sure a lot more undocumented Dems because they need the entitlements like free health-care, Medicaid, and food stamps. I sure hope now that the radical Muslims have sworn to attack America again that all those illegals from the Arab countries that entered this country don't have any WMD's with them.

There have only ever been 84 cases of voter fraud proven.

Except for the convicts who voted for Al Franken.

Quoted from Shadow

Except for the convicts who voted for Al Franken.

Felon's should be allowed to vote.

Taxation without representation.

Ring any bell?

That's your opinion.

Quoted from Shadow

Except for the convicts who voted for Al Franken.

Tell me Shadow... How many convicts??? Follow some right wing media wing nuts, and they will tell you
that 1000 convicted felons voted in that election.
Of course that number is Right Wing hype.

In FACT there were about 400 actual names submitted to the elections board in that election.  Of the 400
most were thrown out because the names submitted didn't match the names or addresses of the actual
voters.  Some listed as "felons" were people who were 'charged' with a felony, but never convicted
of that crime... so they were eligible to vote.  

Once the list of supposed fraudulent voters shrunk to less than the total votes separating the two candidates
the issue was over... but people like you will still run with that story as if actual voter fraud actually
changed the out come of that election.

FACTS Shadow... FACTS, not right wing hype... not some rabid blogger posting about 1000 Felons voting...
FACTS!!!

The FACTS are that Franken won that election, and the Right has whined and cried like little girls
about it ever since.

Many thought SNL alum Al Franken’s bid for the US Senate was a joke in 2008.  That was until the votes came in and there was a virtual tie between Franken and then-Senator Norm Coleman.  The contested Minnesota race took months and many legal battles before courts finally ruled Franken as their new Senator.  It now appears his nomination was not only a joke, but his election may have been pushed over the top by the illegal votes of felons.

Not surprisingly Fox News is one of the only folks out there reporting on a new finding by Minnesota Majority showing that  at least 341 votes by felons were incorrectly counted.  All of those ballots should have been cast out.  And since Democrats pull in votes by former convicts in much higher numbers, it does not take a stretch of the imagination to consider that the improper ballots may have given Franken the race.Considering Franken only ending up winning by 318 votes, that means these votes should been cast out before declaring Franken the winner and Coleman could possibly still be a Senator.Minnesota Majority is a conservative watch dog group and did an extensive 18 month study they say cannot be denied and should be taken seriously.  The organization knows it is too late to change the election, but it would like its findings to make sure things are handled better in the future.

Quoted from Shadow

Many thought SNL alum Al Franken’s bid for the US Senate was a joke in 2008.  That was until the votes came in and there was a virtual tie between Franken and then-Senator Norm Coleman.  The contested Minnesota race took months and many legal battles before courts finally ruled Franken as their new Senator.  It now appears his nomination was not only a joke, but his election may have been pushed over the top by the illegal votes of felons.

Not surprisingly Fox News is one of the only folks out there reporting on a new finding by Minnesota Majority showing that  at least 341 votes by felons were incorrectly counted.  All of those ballots should have been cast out.  And since Democrats pull in votes by former convicts in much higher numbers, it does not take a stretch of the imagination to consider that the improper ballots may have given Franken the race.Considering Franken only ending up winning by 318 votes, that means these votes should been cast out before declaring Franken the winner and Coleman could possibly still be a Senator.Minnesota Majority is a conservative watch dog group and did an extensive 18 month study they say cannot be denied and should be taken seriously.  The organization knows it is too late to change the election, but it would like its findings to make sure things are handled better in the future.

So to summarize... FOXSNOOZE posted that Minnesota Majority (a conservative group)
thinks that all the questioned votes should have been 'cast out'.  

Contested votes are not 'cast out', since they may belong to actual voters.  Months of court cases PROVED
that those contested votes were actually LEGALLY CAST VOTES. Again, some were attributed to
convicted felons, who were not felons.  Their votes were validated.  Some were attributed to voters
with the same name as felons, but were legal voters and not felons.  

Norm Coleman lost that election fair and square.  Coleman had a contingent  of expensive lawyers fighting
every vote of that election and they had unlimited resources to continue the fight until every last vote was
either thrown out or validated.  
Every protested vote was either eliminated or validated, and the result is that Franken Won.  
FACTS Shadow... THE FACTS, not the Right Wing Blog Rabid Hysteria.  FACTS elected Franken and defeated
Coleman.