Democrat Governor Roy Cooper just enabled major voter fraud in the swing state of North Carolina with his veto of Senate Bill 250.

Cooper justified his veto of the bill titled, Remove Foreign Citizens from Voting Rolls, by claiming “the law already prevents non-citizens from voting and has legitimate mechanisms to remove them from the rolls.” He also claimed that the bill would have discouraged some state’s residents from voting.

Cooper said in a statement, “Only citizens should be allowed to vote. But blocking legitimate voters from casting a ballot is a risk we cannot take when the law already prevents non-citizens from voting and has legitimate mechanisms to remove them from the rolls. This legislation creates a high risk of voter harassment and intimidation and could discourage citizens from voting.”

Jay Delancy of the Voter Integrity Project warns Cooper’s intent from what he claims. He noted, “If the Governor’s claims were actually true then our state would not be in a federal lawsuit over their refusal to prove any non-citizen voter list maintenance.”

The truth is that Bill 250 pitted the interests of those concerned about voter integrity against others who are actively pushing for voting rights for non-citizens. Delancy said, “The Governor’s veto means that he cares more about non-citizen voters than about any lawful voters who helped elect him in 2016. We hope the public sees this clearly.”

There is no doubt that foreign citizens across our nation are registering and voting in American elections. The bill Governor Cooper nixed would have required his State Board of Elections to contact any registered voter who had previously been rejected for duty due to the fact of being a foreign citizen.

Further, the law would have given such voters 30 days to prove their legal citizenship or be removed from their state’s voting rolls.

Though Cooper claimed the danger of discouraging legal voters through harassment, his Lt. Governor Dan Forrest disagreed. He tweeted, “Governor Cooper’s veto is reckless at a time when so many are concerned about foreign interference with our elections.”

Forrest said that Governor Cooper is more concerned about non-citizens not being able to vote than he is the “lawful voters who helped elect him.”

Liberal non-profits like the League of Women Voters praised the governor for claiming that “there is no significant evidence of voting by non-citizens in North Carolina.”

Even the leftist New York Times labels that a lie. It reported in August of this year that 19 foreign nationals with ages ranging from 26 to 71 were charged with voting illegally in the November election of 2016. Nine of those also were charged with claiming falsely to be American citizens. Another man was charged with helping one of the foreigners falsely claim citizenship.

Grand jury indictments targeted citizens of 14 nations, including Japan, Germany, Mexico, and Korea. One of the illegal voters, 58-year-old Ramon Esteban Paez-Jerez of the Dominican Republic was deported in the 1980s but returned to the states under a false identity which he the used to gain citizenship in 1999/

North Carolina has been trending purple for several years, and now we know why. Russia isn’t threatening our voting process — leftists like Governor Roy Cooper are.