The right and left are gridlocked in a battle over voter registration laws. The right wants to tighten security and ensure that only eligible voters are participating in elections. The left argues that this makes it too difficult for legitimate voters to successfully cast their ballots.

While you might be inclined to believe that both sides have merit, a quick Google search or scan of mainstream media would tell you the science agrees with the left. As always, this is more propaganda than fact. There are studies on both sides of these arguments, so we are going to take a few minutes to uncover as much truth as possible. We’ll see how reliable different studies are and what makes them more or less applicable to the greater debate.

Liberal Claims

When Trump mentioned illegal voting during the campaign, the liberals reacted quickly and decisively. Politifact debunked the claim in no time, and a number of leftist news outlets cited nine different studies that all agree: widespread voter fraud has never happened in the U.S. and is virtually impossible. This is pretty compelling, and roughly half the country bought it.

As is always the case with liberal “facts,” peering even a little deeper annihilates the claims. All of the studies in question only reviewed voter impersonation fraud. That is when someone impersonates a registered voter to cast a ballot. While Trump acknowledged the possibility of such fraud, his (and the GOP’s) real concern is with ineligible voters casting ballots under their own names. The liberals have cited no studies in regards to this statistic for two reasons. First, it is almost impossible to successfully study. Second, the one study that has been published looks very bad for the left.

A New Study in Virginia

Just this year, a study was published by the Public Interest Legal Foundation on the very topic of ineligible voting. A follow-up to what was published last year, the new results are telling. Since 2011, roughly 5,500 non-citizens registered to vote in the state of Virginia. This is a felony-level offense. Of those, more than 1,800 were confirmed to cast ballots in multiple elections with higher participation totals being possible.

Now, Virginia was one of the more blue states this past election and the 5,500 illegal votes were not enough to sway the state, but in closer calls, these numbers could represent something sinister. New Hampshire was settled by a difference of only 2,701 votes and could easily have been settled by voter fraud.

More importantly, Virginia is estimated to be in the bottom half of states in terms of illegal voter participation. There are states where the problem is likely much worse.

A Lack of Data

As you can guess, the three states estimated to have the most voter fraud are Washington, New York and the behemoth California (New Mexico may have the highest participation rate, but it pales in terms of total number of illegal voters). You’ll notice that all of these states are extremely blue. You’ll also find that there is absolutely no public data to confirm or deny these suspicions.

While it’s easy to see why Democrat-run governments are hiding the truth, it’s interesting to discover just how determined they are. The study in Virginia was remarkably difficult to run. It took multiple lawsuits upheld by federal courts to get the Virginia government to comply and release the data. In states like California, you can expect the results to be far worse, and thus, the government will fight much harder to keep the truth hidden.

Think about this for a moment. If the Virginia government was adamantly refusing to release voting statistics, then they knew about the problem the whole time. While this surprises no one, it exposes a whole new facet of corruption. There is now actionable proof that Virginia officials were elected by illegal votes and took deliberate action to hide and uphold that situation. We can reasonably assume that the same thing is happening to greater degrees in other states.

The left will continue to hide behind their excuses. They will shout that voter registration and affirmation is discriminatory and suppresses votes. In a manner of speaking, they are right. Voter I.D. laws discriminate against illegal voters and suppresses their ability to break the law. In the meantime, it is imperative that the right pushes for more studies to expose the true extent of ineligible voting in this country. It is very likely that Trump was right all along and that Hillary’s popular vote win was only sustained through illegal practices.

~ American Liberty Report