The Subversive Courtship of the Illegal Alien Vote
English: Boss Tweed and the Tammany Ring, caricatured by Thomas Nast. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Tammany Hall of New York City is now rightfully enshrined in American history for its manipulation of the election process. Tammany “fixers” would provide marked ballots to voters, and ensure they voted properly by watching them drop the ballots in the appropriate box. “Strikers” would guarantee huge swathes of votes for a price, which Tammany gladly paid to keep control of the public treasuries. “Vote early, vote often” became a preferred slogan associated with Tammany campaigners, and that message was so effective that “between 1868 and 1871, the votes cast in the city totaled 8% more than the entire voting population- “the dead filling in for the sick,” as one contemporary wag put it.” And by paying “repeaters” to vote for the recently deceased, the dead did overwhelmingly support Tammany politics.
As disgraced Boss William Tweed would later recount, “I don’t think there was ever a fair or honest election in New York City.”
But these are all just practices of the Democrats of yore, right? Wrong. In many ways, Tammany has been alive and well, and still overwhelmingly represented in Democrats’ campaign regimen. “Fixers,” while no longer able to keep such a watchful eye on how ballots are marked, still drive buses and vans to urban areas that vote primarily Democrat, and tote their constituents to the polls with the implied promise of a Democrat vote. “Strikers,” now called “unions,” guarantee swathes of votes for Democrats as part of their symbiotic efforts to control the treasuries. And as James O’Keefe has recently exposed, dead Democrats are very capable of voting in New Hampshire.
But it is the political courtship of immigrants and the poor that draws the most convincing parallel between Tammany and modern Democrat politics. Tammany notoriously courted the poor, promising them jobs in exchange for their votes. Under Boss Tweed, a “naturalization mill” was established at the harbor, instantly creating new citizens- and most importantly, new, loyal votes for Tammany. While some contend that this created an immersive environment for immigrants and provided benefits for the poor, this came at the expense of outrageous corruption and tyrannical affronts to liberty. At a time when the average worker earned $1 a day, the Tweed Ring “pocketed more than $30 million in public money” during its tenure alone.
Time and angry citizens finally caught up with Boss Tweed, but the lucrative nature of his relationship with the poor didn’t go unnoticed by some smart, more ambitious politicians that would come after. What Boss Tweed did was effective, but it was small potatoes. Boss Tweed courted the poor in New York City, but what if that same thing could be applied federally? Enter the New Deal, where a Democrat with grander vision implemented a much larger safety net for the poor in return for their loyal vote. This was expanded upon by another Democrat at a later date, this time called the Great Society.
But what of those immigrants whose votes could be bought and sold? Well, by the 1900’s, stricter immigration laws limited Tammany’s ability to court the immigrant population. And since the political courtship of the poor had been nationalized, the poor had little need for a local political machine like Tammany. So Tammany “finally collapsed in the 1960s.” But the untapped opportunity to secure the immigrant vote and grant them government benefits in exchange for their support has not gone unnoticed by smart, ambitious Democrats in recent years.
Of course, Democrats can’t just set up “naturalization mills” to instantly create new voters today. Bill Clinton found a way around this, though, in 1993. The first bill he signed into law, the Motor Voter Act, required that the government allow immediate voter registration to anyone who renews a driver’s license or applies for unemployment or welfare, “without showing ID or proof of citizenship.” Various incidents of voter fraud resulted, with a glaring example exposed by a 1996 INS report showing that “4,023 illegal aliens possibly cast ballots” in an election where Republican Robert Dornan lost to Democrat Loretta Sanchez by fewer than 1,000 votes.
This was good for Democrats, but it is still small potatoes. What if amnesty can be granted to illegal aliens and taxpayer-funded benefits can be exchanged for their loyal votes in the open, as Democrats do with the poor?
Amnesty is the Democrats’ endgame, and we all know this. It is the logical progression for Democratic politics. You see, Tammany never died. Tammany just happened to be the biggest of many localized tumors in the 19th century. The 20th century saw the cancer of Tammany politics grow to a federal level, such that it has infected the whole of the Democratic Party. Amnesty will simply be another avenue for Democrats to manipulate the electorate.
But until Democrats get their amnesty, more subversive measures to control the electorate must be employed. If illegal aliens are allowed to vote due to lax voting regulations, they will overwhelmingly vote Democrat on the promise of amnesty, which will carry with it various government entitlements. And that is a significant reason explaining why Democrats now oppose something as simple and reasonable as a photo ID requirement to vote. If a person need not have an ID to register to vote, there is no logical reason to believe that illegal aliens can’t take to the polls in significant numbers and steal an election.
For all the left’s talk about how inconsequential and rare voter fraud is, it should be clear that even the tiniest example is too much. But the tiniest examples are not what we are dealing with. Just this year, Florida, perhaps the most renowned of swing states, appealed to the federal government to “confirm citizenship status (and voter fraud) for an estimated 180,000 illegal immigrants already registered to vote in Florida.” This Democratic administration denied that request.
Meanwhile, Michelle Obama reminds her supporters that this election could come down to “those last few thousand people we register to vote. It could all come down to those last few thousand we need to help get to the polls in November…”
