11/17/00 3:50 p.m.
Florida Vote Fraud?
How many Florida voters were ineligible?

By Robert Rector, a policy analyst living in Washington, D.C.

ow many of Al Gore's votes in Florida came from felons, non-citizens, and other persons ineligible to vote? Voting in U.S. elections is nominally restricted to U.S. citizens. But, thanks to the Democrats' "Motor Voter Act of 1993," one no longer needs to actually demonstrate citizenship in order to register and vote in U.S. elections. Although non-citizens apparently remain a small fraction of overall voters, they can be numerous enough to tip the scales in tight elections. This is particularly true in high-immigration states such as California and Florida.

For example, a congressional investigation of the recent contested House election between Bob Dornan and Loretta Sanchez in California found that nearly one percent of the total votes were unlawfully cast by non-citizens. While one percent of votes may not seem a lot, it is gigantic in comparison to the razor-slim margins currently being contested in Florida.

A recent government survey of voter registration in Hawaii found a minimum of 550 non-citizens who were illegally registered to vote. No similar survey has been conducted in Florida, but we do know that Florida has twelve times more non-citizen residents than does Hawaii. Thus, if the Hawaiian pattern held in Florida there would be between 6,000 and 7,000 non-citizens registered to vote in Florida.

Moreover, registration and voting by non-citizens is linked to ethnic political activism, and is thus more likely among Florida's Hispanics than among Hawaii's predominantly Philippine migrants. Whatever the exact number of Florida's non-citizen voters, it is clear that the vast majority would have favored Gore.

Nor are non-citizen voters the only problem in Florida. A 1998 article in the Miami Herald revealed that some 2,800 ineligible felons were registered to vote in Miami-Dade county alone. Another source of potential vote fraud is that New Yorkers who spend half the year in Florida often cast two ballots, voting in person in Florida and absentee in New York. Even if Al Gore claims a majority of Florida votes based on dubious manual recounts, the question remains: How many of his votes were unlawfully cast?