Media Bias: Not surprisingly, the media take seriously and support Jill Stein's and Hillary Clinton's excellent vote-recount adventure, despite there being no indication a recount is needed. Heck, even President Obama agrees — Donald Trump won, period. But when Trump dares to suggest in a Sunday tweet that illegal aliens voted in the election, the media respond with massive denial.
"In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally," Trump tweeted to the barely concealed contempt of many in the media.
Typical was the utterly dismissive headline in The Nation, the flagship publication of the progressive movement: "The President-Elect Is An Internet Troll."
The Washington Post's "The Fix" blog site did a little better: "Donald Trump's new explanation for losing the popular vote? A Twitter-born conspiracy theory."
There are many more, too many to put here. Most follow the same theme: Trump foolishly followed the faulty analysis of Gregg Phillips of True The Vote, an online anti-voter-fraud site and app. Phillips estimates that illegals cast three million votes in the 2016 election. He's wrong, say the media. Heck, even the liberal fact-checking site FactCheck.org says so.
But, in fact, it's almost certain that illegals did vote — and in significant numbers. Whether it was three million or not is another question.
While states control the voter registration process, some states are so notoriously slipshod in their controls (California, Virginia and New York — all of which have political movements to legalize voting by noncitizens — come to mind) that it would be shocking if many illegals didn'tvote. Remember, a low-ball estimate says there are at least 11 million to 12 million illegals in the U.S., but that's based on faulty Census data. More likely estimates put the number at 20 million to 30 million.
What's disappointing is that instead of at least seriously considering Trump's charge, many media reports merely parrot leftist talking points and anti-Trump rhetoric by pushing the idea that Republicans and others not of the progressive left who seek to limit voting to citizens only are racist, xenophobic nuts.
But there is evidence to back Trump's claims. A 2014 study in the online Electoral Studies Journal shows that in the 2008 and 2010 elections, illegal immigrant votes were in fact quite high.
"We find that some noncitizens participate in U.S. elections, and that this participation has been large enough to change meaningful election outcomes including Electoral College votes, and congressional elections," wrote Jesse T. Richman, Gulshan A. Chattha, both of Old Dominion University, and David C. Earnest of George Mason University.
More specifically, they write, "Noncitizen votes likely gave 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."
Specifically, the authors say that illegals may have cast as many as 2.8 million votes in 2008 and 2010. That's a lot of votes. And when you consider the population of illegal inhabitants has only grown since then, it's not unreasonable to suppose that their vote has, too.
Critics note that a Harvard team in 2015 had responded to the study, calling it "biased." But that report included this gem: "Further, the likely percent of noncitizen voters in recent U.S. elections is 0."
Really? That's simply preposterous, frankly, as anyone who has lived in California can attest. Leftist get-out-the-vote groups openly urge noncitizens to vote during election time, and the registration process is notoriously loose. To suggest there is no illegal voting at all is absurd.
What's appalling, as we said, is not the media's skepticism, but its denial. But why? Illegal votes shouldn't be allowed to sway U.S. elections. So why tolerate them?
When the far left began insinuating that the Russians had hacked the election, the media treated the nonsupported claims with the utmost of respect. They still do. But not Trump's suggestion that illegals voted, and in large numbers, mainly for Democratic candidates, including Hillary Clinton.
And, yes, Trump is right: Illegal votes may in part explain why Hillary now has a nearly two-million-vote lead in the popular vote, even though she lost convincingly in the Electoral College. A Pew Research Poll earlier this year found that 53% of the Democratic Party supports letting illegals vote, even though it's against the law. It's pretty clear why.
Yes, there is room for skepticism of any claim that's made. But every vote cast by someone who isn't by law permitted to vote disenfranchises American citizens. The charge should at least be taken seriously.
Meanwhile, we will expect the media to continue to give its fawning attention to the spurious challenges of nonexistent vote tampering leveled by Hillary Clinton and Jill Stein, on behalf of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
While the media savage Trump and his motives, please recall what Hillary said in the debates: that the idea a defeated candidate wouldn't recognize the results of the election was "horrifying." And she has also agreed there is no "actionable evidence" of either hacking or outside interference, despite joining with Stein to seek recounts.
So what about Clinton's motives?
As for Stein, who barely registered a blip on the 2016 electoral screen, the $5 million or so she has raised to pay for recounts really seems more like a ploy to bail out her failed campaign than a serious attempt at a recount. But the media continue to treat her like a serious political operator — not the far-left kook she is.
http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/trump-is-right-millions-of-illegals-probably-did-vote-in-2016/Related:
