If you listen to The Washington Post (and why wouldn’t you?), objections to proposed changes to Virginia’s voter registration requirements are just a partisan tempest in a teapot. True, non-citizens and felons would no longer have to check boxes that would give away their ineligibility at a glance, but no problem, proponents say, pointing out they still need to sign next to fine print that they’re not disqualified from voting. . .
So what’s the big deal? After all, election officials appointed by Gov. Terry McAuliffe assure us the change will “simplify the process … to avoid rejecting otherwise eligible voters who simply overlook a box.”
What that means is not checking the boxes will no longer be considered a “material omission,” and grounds for rejecting an application. And before just accepting the excuse that a box on a form presents an insurmountable barrier for citizens who wish to vote, a bit of background information needs to be considered.
That’s because this past April, McAuliffe vetoed a bill that would have required making information available to registrars about individuals not qualified to serve as jurors due to reasons including not being a citizen, being a felon whose voting rights have not been restored, not being a Commonwealth resident or a resident of another jurisdiction, and being “adjudicated incapacitated.” His only explanation for doing so, without further elaboration, was that “additional study” needed to be done.
“Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe and his appointees to the Virginia State Board of Elections seem determined to ensure that felons and non-citizens can illegally register and vote in elections without getting caught,” a National Review Online dissection of these latest moves concludes. “Why are they doing this? Perhaps it has something to do with a recent report on the huge influx of immigrants into Virginia that appears to be turning the state blue, since a majority of foreign-born residents favor the Democratic party. The same is true for felons: Felons vote overwhelmingly for Democrats.”
And Democrats vote overwhelmingly for “gun control,” with semi-auto bans, registration schemes masked as “background checks,” and a ban on private sales all part of the party’s platform. That definitely places both the voter fraud issue and the “immigration” issue within the purview of what’s appropriate for “single issue” gun groups to consider in their candidate rankings and endorsements.
Still, say you’re a Democrat who thinks the McAuliffe voter rule change is a positive move to ensure no one who is eligible to vote is disenfranchised. Just to be consistent, then, is it safe to assume you also won’t worry about “immaterial omissions” in Section 11 of ATF Form 4473, because a purchaser still has to sign a certification? And you’ll be OK with the transfer being completed with no adverse actions against the FFL?
This is why we are hosed as a country. Democratic strategy now is to import millions of blue voters and accuse anyone who doesn’t agree they should have full citizen rights of being racists.
If all of the immigrants that were coming in from south of the border were voting red you can bet your ass there would have been a 5 story fence along the entire border manned by drones and armed border patrol agents built when Clinton was still in office.
They’ve been doing it since 1789. French, Irish, Germans, Italians, Eastern Europeans, Hispanics, pretty much every major ethnic group in the US today except English.
The illegals coming in From Mexico are a whole lot different than from the 18th Century. Want useful immigrants? Import people who have:
1. No violent felonies on their record.
2. Willing to support and defend the Constitution of the United States – including the Bill of Rights.
3. Speak English.
4. Possess job skills or training that would be beneficial to the U.S.
5. Desire to assimilate into American culture (doesn’t hate bacon, bikinis, Christians, or Jews).
Deport everyone else.
Good idea.
>> The illegals coming in From Mexico are a whole lot different than from the 18th Century.
What makes you believe so? Many people who immigrated to US in the 18th century didn’t speak English before they arrived here, didn’t really care all that much about the Constitution, didn’t specifically desire to assimilate, and didn’t possess any special skills beyond tilling the fields or working in a factory. I would wager that more than a few also had some troubles with law in their countries of origin.
int19h:
Immigrants during the 18th and 19th (and early 20th) centuries were coming to a free nation, but also a nation that did not have handouts. We were not a welfare state back then. Lights attract moths. The kind of light we had back then was freedom to make yourself. Today our light is welfare, with increasing restrictions on those who would make something of themselves. So it’s not so much “today’s immigrants are different than those before” as it is “the nation is not the same as it was before”. We had pretty much open borders up until around 1913, but everyone coming knew they had to pull their own weight. While many immigrating today want to do the same, an increasingly large segment come here for benefits (we even advertise food stamps to Mexican citizens *in Mexico*). But that’s really our fault, not theirs. You can have open immigration, or you can have a welfare state. You cannot have both (for long).
The other difference is that when you came to the US in the 1700’s, 1800’s, or early 1900’s, your plan was not to go back after you had made a bit of money; or if you couldn’t make it here. You planned to stay, no matter the challenge, because while you might not have known what your new country would be like, you sure knew what the “old country” was like, and were damn sure you wanted no part of it.
If it’s your America to gove away, it’s my America to take away from you. If you need illegals so you can enslave a nanny, then I have to take America away from your kids too.
A system of fire hydrants is less effective or doesn’t work if you let kids knock tje caps off one to use as a water-park sprinkler.
There was also no cradle to grave welfare state or out of control central govt in the old days of immigrants arriving. The role of the state alone is why immigration is totally different, even if you believe the masses of third world immigrants today is the same as Euro immigrants from a century or two ago.
Yep, bring then in, put them on welfare and give them the right to vote. That’s the demorats plan to keep them in power permanently.
Aren’t the Dems already in the graveyards registering more voters?
Not just an evil liberal blue house of (D) bag. He actually ran the place.
Eventually American Citizens are going to have accept that what the Statist are doing is a Declaration of War upon citizens of The Constitutional Republic of America. California has foreign invaders as politicians, in direct violation of the law, in a nation based upon the law. That does not inspire lawful attitudes or respect of the law.
All concealed carriers in that state no longer have to be worried about filling out the ccl paperwork, because they could FEEL disenfranchised. The gay marriage decision would make the permitting procedure illegal, because it discriminates against Americans exercising their right.
So what’s the endgame here? Most of these politicians will be dead in a decade or so and as the majority foreign born demo grows the white and black yuppies will be less and less likely to keep their seats no matter how much imaginary social justice they promise so is it all for the “party” that they set the stage? I can’t relate to being so enthralled or zealous about an artificial construct that doesn’t matter anyway. This makes politicians seem more like cultists to me. The cult of Democrats or Republicans. Regardless of what they do they’ll all end up poisoned to death in white Nikes with their testicles cut off. I guess they just want to drag as many non-members down with them as they can?
The endgame is replacing a population that will not accept collectivist authoritarian rule with one that will accept collectivist authoritarian rule. This effort has two arms. One is indoctrination by leftist-run schools, universities, and news media (mirrored by the intense effort to undermine free speech so only one voice is heard). The other arm is to displace Americans with foreigners who have no interest in or connection to American ideals and culture.
And it’s working exactly as intended.
THIS ^ well said. Over at site : http://www.conservativetreehouse.com is a great article about rules changes to benefit GOP owned and controlled candidates. Tripwires .
Bingo. It’s a pretty obvious plan, but many in the nation are far to dim to see it.
Either permits and taxes are required to exercise my right to vote + keep and bear arms, or it isn’t. None of this background check bullshit for 2nd but not the 1st. We don’t pick and choose what freedoms to allow because we agree with them or not. When it comes to government, I am not obligated to follow unconstitutional laws, but I also am in no position to tell people what freedoms to exercise based on the way I believe the world SHOULD be. Guess what, if it was suppose to be different, it would be.
Here is my form of “negotiation”- a required, FREE, safety demonstration when buying a firearm is not an infringement on my 2A right.
The Republicans don’t get a pass on this from me! Where is the fence those jerks have been promising us for at least a decade? The US Chamber of Commerce wants to boost the H1b and other visa programs that sure seem to be designed to keep wages down and unemployment up, and Senator Marko Rubio is clearly their bought and paid for lackey.
HYPOCRISY: a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not; especially : the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion
DEMOCRAT: a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not; especially : the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion
I don’t buy it. From the data I have seen, it seems that as they spend more time in the country, and generation by generation, immigrant voters, and in this case Latinos specifically, tend to as subsets of the population move toward the general population distribution in terms of party membership and voting D or R. Also, the Democrats have slowly been losing Latino support by a few percentage points a year as far as I can tell. If the Dems are playing this as their long game, I don’t think it will work. At best, it is a short-term strategy.
5 takeaways about the 2014 Latino vote
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/11/10/5-takeaways-about-the-2014-latino-vote/
Latino Support for Democrats Falls, but Democratic Advantage Remains
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2014/10/29/latino-support-for-democrats-falls-but-democratic-advantage-remains/
Whether or not the trend you describe is true, it’s a long-term effect. Today’s elections will not be decided by voters two generations from now. Population spikes matter.
SPOT ON, BABY!
Yeah, if we want a clear political analysis on how to preserve gun rights, we should listen to the guy from *New Jersey*!
Step AWAY from the bong!
Did you by any chance look at the other Pew studies, such as those cited by Codrea and GOA, that show:
Hispanic immigrants are FIVE times as likely to identify with the Democrat Party than with the Republican Party.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/07/22/are-unauthorized-immigrants-overwhelmingly-democrats
ILLEGAL Hispanics are EIGHT times as likely to identify with the D party over the R party.
Per a June 2014 Pew Research poll (“Gun Rights/Gun Control”), Hispanics are FIFTY PERCENT MORE LIKELY than the general population is, to believe that “Controlling gun ownership is more important than protecting the right of Americans to own guns.”
http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/gun-rightsgun-control
Hispanics are OVER THREE TIMES AS LIKELY (3.2X) as Republicans are to believe that gun control is more important than gun rights.
Hispanics are OVER TWICE AS LIKELY (2.3X) as the general population to believe that “Only law enforcement should be able to own guns.”
Hispanics are nearly SIX TIMES MORE LIKELY (5.6x) than Republicans to believe that only the government should own guns.
Democrats are over THREE TIMES as likely as Republicans are, to think that gun control is more important than protecting the RKBA, and 3.6 TIMES as likely to think that only cops should have guns.
Of those Hispanics who are pro-gun, most will nevertheless be VOTING Democrat, and therefore VOTING anti-gun. Not to say there aren’t a lot of good conservative Hispanics. Of course there are. Unfortunately, it’s hardly the rule. Statistically more like the exception. IF you manage to inflict us with your alleged asymptotic approach to the mean, contrary to the indications of the last 50 years of over-immigration, the mean would move far to the left, and by the time we got it, the USA would be a third-world, sardine-can, rat-race banana republic, with a population in the billions.
See *California* for empirical verification and a hint of the future you want to inflict on us.
Of course a significant absolute number of legalized immigrants would become gun owners. A significant number would also become RINOs. Some would become real Republicans. What matters is the percentages. The overwhelming majority will become anti-gun Democrats. Can these percentages be made less horrific, if conservatives reach out harder and better? Sure. Maybe if Rush Limbaugh does half his show in Spanish, Hispanics might only be 6 or 7 times more likely to vote D. And it would still be suicidal not to try to stop and reverse the invasion. It’s way too much, way too fast to assimilate. It’s our culture being assimilated, not theirs.
Another claim we hear is that Hispanic immigrants are actually naturally, instinctively better on gun rights than Americans are (!) because they’re Catholic and therefore allegedly naturally more conservative, etc, etc. I wish that were true, but the empirical evidence in the real world, as opposed to the Happy Meal wish upon a star world, is overwhelmingly to the contrary.
Per the Pew study, Catholics are 15% MORE likely than the general population to prefer gun control over gun rights, and 50% MORE likely to think that only the police state should have guns.
When compared to Republicans, Catholics are two and a half times more likely to prefer gun control over gun rights, and three and a half times more likely to think that only government should have guns.
“White non-Hispanic” Catholics tend to be slightly less anti-gun and more pro-gun than the general population, but are still twice as likely to want “gun control and guns for government only” as the typical Republican is.
Wishful thinking aside, the Catholic Church as a whole is hardly a conservative organization in an American sense. It *SHOULD BE* a conservative Republican institution. But it isn’t. Wishing won’t make it otherwise. Same story for Mexicans: However much the neo-“Libertarian”, Chamber of Commerce, Wall Street Journal crowd wants to make believe that Mexican immigrants, invaders, and anchor babies tend to be more conservative and pro-gun than Americans (!), the evidence says the opposite.
This disinformation flies in the face of evidence, math, and reason. It’s like someone hears that legalized illegals vote 10% “Republican”, they do the math on 20 million illegals and get excited about how great it’ll be, because, just think of what we can do with TWO MILLION NEW REPUBLICANS!
But hey dude, don’t be so negative! Maybe we can bring them around…
Yes, maybe to some extent. But who would facilitate legalizing and continuing a massive flood of high-fertility immigrants who have historically voted Democrat, on the Hail Mary bet that we might be able to reverse that overwhelming tendency from here on out? The best indicator of what the group will tend to do in the real world is what it’s been doing for the last 55 years, which is voting Democrat. This is partly due to the suicidally excessive size of the flood, far too large to assimilate. If the flood were reduced to a 1950s level trickle, I could believe we could win them over.
California is the future of the USA, and for the same reason. Sure, significant absolute number of amnestied illegals, chain migrants and anchor babies vote “R” in California. But the vast bulk vote Democrat, and thus anti-gun.
Final disclaimer: I like Hispanics and Catholics as much as anyone. Had a girlfriend of Hispanic Catholic heritage for many years, lived and studied in Mexico, was a Spanish major for my first two years of college. Regardless of language or ethnicity, the immigration rates since 1960 have been increasingly, suicidally excessive. It’s a question of do we want to keep OUR Republic, our sovereignty, our Constitution, our liberty, our freedom of movement, our quality of life, our standard of living, our cost of living, OUR real per capita wealth and income, OUR job opportunities, our culture, our school & medical systems, our security, our human and natural environments, our privacy and dignity? Or do we want to overrun, overwhelm, redistribute, and trash them?
Open immigration to the USA won’t save the world. It will only wreck the USA. A true, limited guest worker program on the other hand, would help the world. For it to be a real guest worker program and not a “guest worker” program, the guests, and their children, would have to permanently return to their country of origin after a few years, to make room to give other worthy people a chance for the guest worker opportunity. Naturally, birthright citizenship would first have to be abolished. Former guest workers would return to their own countries, relatively successful and wealthy, with money, training, experience and connections to start businesses that will help their own countries. They would also return with their positive experience of constitutional liberty and hopes and expectations to bring it to their oppressed countrymen.
How about letting non violent felons have their gun civil rights restore? Try that on for size Virginia Democrats and Republicans.
If they willfully (nonviolently) make available to our enemies information that is so sensitive that its disclosure damages the security of the US?
I guess if you (properly) stand such against a wall at sun rise it solves the issue.
>> True, non-citizens and felons would no longer have to check boxes that would give away their ineligibility at a glance
Because, of course, putting a checkbox on the voter registration form that basically amounts to “You’re eligible to vote, right?” question is going to deter voter fraud. I hear it’s almost as efficient as “no guns” signs in gun-free zones to deter spree killers!