> a significant group of people regularly claiming on TV that 20million people have illegally entered the country in the last 4 years,
Plus all of them somehow managing to cast totally-undetectable votes in elections, traveling to specific swing states, for no direct gain to themselves even though getting caught would mean deportation, while uniformly maintaining superhuman levels of discipline and secrecy. /s
Those are just a few of the ones who used their own names. An unofficial analysis by CBS "showed [at least] 119 dead people have voted a total of 229 times in Chicago in the last decade [2006-2016]."
We know the problem exists. We won't know how widespread the problem is without a thorough nationwide investigation, but the Democrats oppose that fiercely. They demand extensive evidence be provided before an investigation will be allowed, then ignore what evidence is available.
> Nineteen foreign nationals were caught voting in 2016 in North Carolina alone.
I am very amused at how you trying to present that as a Big Scary Number. It's as if some carnival barker is hyping up the ferocious lion, king of beasts, and then pulls the curtain aside to reveal confused Pekingese.
> We won't know how widespread the problem is without a thorough nationwide investigation
A false dilemma. State-level investigations are entirely possible and are also within the power of the most vocal doom-sayers to trigger... So why don't they? Because they do not want those investigations, which have a nasty habit of disproving the wild claims they've been peddling to motivate their base.
Demanding a national investigation is an excuse for inaction, firstly because it's legally incoherent with how states manage elections, and secondly because whether Louisiana can detect/stop a berjillion false-voters streaming across the border has nothing to do with requiring a report on how New Hampshire is doing.
> I am very amused at how you trying to present that as a Big Scary Number. It's as if some carnival barker is hyping up an amazing attraction and then pulls the curtain aside to a puzzling disappointment.
It's more like you're lying about what I said. I offered that as an example showing that the problem exists and can be detected.
Isolated investigations with limited resources, facing official opposition, naturally find only isolated cases. We won't know how widespread ("scary") it is without better investigations.
> State-level investigations are entirely possible and are also within the power of the most vocal doom-sayers to trigger
> Demanding a national investigation is an excuse for inaction, firstly because it's legally incoherent with how states manage elections
Both statements are simply inaccurate. The federal government sets the rules for federal elections, federal courts oversee them, and federal courts have blocked state-level investigations.
For example:
AP: Texas can no longer investigate alleged cases of vote harvesting, federal judge says
> I offered that as an example showing that the problem exists and can be detected.
An example [0] suggesting ~0.0004% bad votes in an election is not a meaningful example unless you want to sneakily redefine "the problem" away from "significant numbers of bad-votes may change results" to a pointlessly bland "some nonzero number of bad-votes happen." [1]
If cases are as persistent and widespread as those politicians claim, it should be much easier to find similarly-large-scale evidence. (For example, their mythical "buses of illegals.")
> federal courts oversee them, and federal courts have blocked state-level investigations. For example [...]
That "example" is nonsense.
1. It has nothing to do with non-citizens (or felons) registering to vote or casting ballots. The thing Texas "can't investigate" is an entirely separate crime the state recently added to their books, involving a different set of people doing different things.
2. The reason they're being blocked from prosecution is because they passed a shitty law with a crime that might unconstitutionally restrict freedom of speech, not because the state doesn't manage and audit its own voter-rolls and election systems and enforce existing criminal statues.
> not because the state doesn't manage and audit its own voter-rolls and election systems
It only does so under federal regulation and supervision, as proven by the fact that federal courts recently blocked three states from removing non-citizens from their voter rolls.
Regarding the example: once again you've raised irrelevant objections to an example that proves the federal government manages federal elections and blocks investigations into voter fraud. Your objection? That investigation was about a different kind of fraud.
Regarding your first point: once again you've demanded proof be provided before an investigation. Now that's "an excuse for inaction"!
Demanding a national investigation is certainly not "an excuse for inaction" as you claimed; it is in fact a call for action.
I'm not sure how to parse the sarcasm in that one. It's literally true, and counting people (rather than voters) is reasonable when you look the history of US demographics.
Are you saying it would be scummy for some folks to rail against certain groups while happily accepting their contribution to local census numbers?
Plus all of them somehow managing to cast totally-undetectable votes in elections, traveling to specific swing states, for no direct gain to themselves even though getting caught would mean deportation, while uniformly maintaining superhuman levels of discipline and secrecy. /s