Non-citizens, who should not be voting, wield significant influence in American elections according to a new report from the Washington Post. Can you guess which party they typically vote for?

Jesse Richman and David Earnest reported, here are some highlights:

Could non-citizens decide the November election? In a forthcoming article in the journal Electoral Studies, we bring real data from big social science survey datasets to bear on the question of whether, to what extent, and for whom non-citizens vote in U.S. elections. Most non-citizens do not register, let alone vote. But enough do that their participation can change the outcome of close races… Because non-citizens tended to favor Democrats (Obama won more than 80 percent of the votes of non-citizens in the 2008 CCES sample), we find that this participation was large enough to plausibly account for Democratic victories in a few close elections. Non-citizen votes could have given Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health-care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) won election in 2008 with a victory margin of 312 votes. Votes cast by just 0.65 percent of Minnesota non-citizens could account for this margin. It is also possible that non-citizen votes were responsible for Obama’s 2008 victory in North Carolina. Obama won the state by 14,177 votes, so a turnout by 5.1 percent of North Carolina’s adult non-citizens would have provided this victory margin.

That’s kind of a big deal, isn’t it? Oh, and then there’s this:

We also find that one of the favorite policies advocated by conservatives to prevent voter fraud appears strikingly ineffective. Nearly three quarters of the non-citizens who indicated they were asked to provide photo identification at the polls claimed to have subsequently voted.

Allahpundit of Hot Air asks some legitimate questions here:

Does this about wrap things up for GOP participation in comprehensive immigration reform next year? Border hawks have argued all along that mass legalization of illegals is a ploy by Democrats to fast-track voting by a group of people who, on balance, support left-wing policies. Now here’s a study suggesting that not only is illegal voting by non-citizens already happening, in some key cases it’s actually decisive. How does a House Republican who’s on the fence about amnesty justify voting yes to his conservative constituents after this? And how does Obama justify an executive amnesty to centrists and independents who are skeptical but otherwise undecided?

Here’s another question: Will Democrats finally admit that voter fraud exists?



