Who Can Vote, Who Can’t, And How Do We Know The Difference?

As Americans, we celebrate the freedom to become registered voters and to cast a vote for the person or persons who represent us.  It is the greatest of all responsibilities in our Republic, one that many men and women have fought, bled, and died for to protect. Although voter fraud is not something we think of often, it does happen. In this article, I discuss the SAVE database and how states can utilize it in the coming months leading up to the election to make sure only eligible, registered United States citizens are allowed to cast ballots.

There is a national database of documented legal aliens in the United States, and such a database could prove useful for states to utilize to purge voter rolls and validate voter registrations.  The purpose of this database is intended to enable states to identify individuals who may be legal residents but not citizens so that they cannot take part in the 2012 Presidential Election. Neither legal aliens, nor illegal aliens are eligible to vote in the United States of America. Only legal U.S. citizens are eligible to vote in our elections. Called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlement database (SAVE), it is an electronic fee-based system operated by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to verify that a person has the legal alien status paperwork which provides accuracy for government benefits and licensing agencies or other lawful purposes.  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has opened up access to this database for states to check for voter fraud before the 2012 election process.

Recent roadblocks to access this database from the Department of Homeland Security have been put up by the Barack Hussein Obama Administration to the state of Florida. The state was accused by Democrats of handling the database inappropriately.  They said “using such a database would disenfranchise the poor and minority votes.”  However, a United States judge blocked President Obama’s attempts to stop Florida’s voter review and access to the database. Under pressure during the week of July 16, Obama relented, granting Florida their legal right to access the database.

Secretaries of State may request access to the database – and many states are doing so, including Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio, and Utah.  If states are granted permission by the Department of Homeland Security – and not blocked by the White House – they may run what is called “alien numbers” that the SAVE database records.  This unique number is an identifier of sorts that will alert states to individuals who are attempting to utilize voting rights only granted to legal United States citizens who have registered to vote.

According to the website for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), there is no national database of citizens that states can check to prove U.S. citizenship – something I found very interesting.  However, the SAVE database can track alien numbers to stop voter fraud.  Voting groups are concerned that the voter purging might make it difficult to correct mistakes in time for the 2012 Presidential Election.

With this knowledge, why are we now becoming concerned with the utilization of the SAVE database four months before a National Election?  Why wasn’t this attempted last year, or even two years ago? Do states have enough time to compare their voting registration rolls with the data from the SAVE database and be prepared for the 2012 Presidential Election?  It is of note that the major states of Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, New Mexico, and Ohio are expected to be competitive in the race.

I have two major complaints.  One is that this should have been done earlier. This election is one we cannot afford to miss out on, and as days pass, many states have deadlines for registering to vote.  If you have not registered, do so. Soon. This election may be the most important election of our lifetime – with a recession, unemployment at 8% (and rising), immigration issues becoming more critical and divisive, and health care reform being forced upon us a tax.  The other major complaint is that this database does nothing to address any illegal aliens who may have somehow found their way onto voter rolls since they do not have an alien number.  The potential voters who are clearly illegal and thus are in every way ineligible to vote will be heavily counted on by the Obama administration for re-election, as evidenced by his recent actions directly courting the millions of illegal aliens in this country.

Get out and vote.  Write your Secretary of State to register in the next weeks to utilize the SAVE database.  Let’s get moving while we have time to move. Let us have an election by the legal and registered voters of the United States, double-checked by a national database to combat voter fraud.

Photo credit: Cali4Beach (Creative Commons)