The Megyn Kelly Show - Deep Dive: One Group Fighting To Safeguard Against Illegal Voting in November 2024 | Ep. 867

Episode Date: August 22, 2024

Megyn Kelly is joined by Gene Hamilton, executive director and general counsel of America First Legal (AFL), for this deep dive special episode, to discuss how AFL is raising awareness about illegal voters, what initiatives each state could be doing to fight this problem, the exact way illegal voters use the DMV to get on voter rolls, how states can learn to identify this problem, and more.Hamilton- https://aflegal.org/about/Electronic Payments Coalition: https://ElectronicPaymentsCoalition.orgHungryroot: Go to https://Hungryroot.com/megyn to get 40% off your first delivery and get your free veggies. 

Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Early voting in America starts in a couple of weeks. And in the shadow of 2020, many Americans are wondering about efforts to ensure the safety and legality of our vote. We wanted to take a deep dive on this issue with someone whose organization is making it a point to stop illegal voting in America. Gene Hamilton is that man. He is executive director and general counsel at America First Legal. And he joins me now to discuss what America First Legal or AFL is doing. Some Americans really enjoy using their credit cards because it can be a hassle-free way to pay and not to mention it's secure. But our sponsor, the American Payments Coalition, says that some

DC politicians want to change all that with the Durbin Marshall credit card bill. They say the it's secure. But our sponsor, the American Payments Coalition, says that some D.C. politicians want to change all that with the Durbin Marshall credit card bill. They say the bill lets corporate megastores pick how your credit card is processed, allowing them to use untested payment networks that jeopardize your data security and rewards. They say corporate megastores will make more money and you'll wind up paying the price. Find out more info at guardyourcard.com and consider telling Congress to guard your card while you're there too. Gene, welcome to the show. Megan, thanks for having me. Okay. So just outline the problem for me first, as you were looking at it before you decided to tackle it. Of course. Look, everyone in America has heard about problems related to non-citizens or illegal aliens being on voter rolls.

This is a very common occurrence. Now, the left would want you to believe, of course, that this never happens. No one would ever be an illegal alien and register to vote. But it's actually more common than what you would actually think. It's actually a very frequent occurrence, especially at the point of obtaining a driver's license or other such things, where someone can get added to a state's list of voters where they shouldn't be. Or if they actually use a federal form where they just simply check a box that says that I swear that I am a citizen. Now, please register me to vote. Those are real problems. There should never be an illegal alien on any state's voter rolls. Now, look,

there are a number of states who have been doing some things for a number of years that are kind of very basic and that are helpful and that are good, but there don't go far enough. steps that they can take to remove illegal aliens from their list of voters using data and information that they're entitled to receive from the Department of Homeland Security. All right, stand by. We'll get to the cure in a minute. I want to spend another few minutes on the problem. So is it the case, because when I lived in New York City, they passed a law trying to make it legal for illegal aliens to vote. That was not upheld. But are there states out there like the crazy New York, you know, policy that are actually trying? You know, you mentioned driver's license for licenses for illegals. We know Tim Walz wanted this in Minnesota. So there are states out there that are saying it's fine for illegals to get driver's licenses. And I guess there could be some as crazy as New York where then they say, and they should have the right to vote. Do you know whether that's out there?

Yeah, and it certainly is. And it can also happen in states that aren't crazy because there is a single point of failure. And a single point of failure. And the single point of failure is at the point of the person getting the driver's license from a clerk at the DMV. That is your single point of failure. So if you are a clerk at the DMV and someone comes to you, maybe they're an illegal alien and maybe it's a crazy state that says, hey, we give driver's licenses to everyone who's here regardless of their immigration status. Or maybe you're a good state, but your laws in your state say that if you're here and you have work authorization from the Department of Homeland Security, that we'll go ahead and give you a driver's license. Now, what can happen, though, at that single point of failure, at the point of getting your driver's license, is that at least before the Real ID Act, and there's still problems after the Real ID Act, is that it's just a matter of somebody

checking a box that says, I'm a citizen, and I want to be registered to vote. This is something that happens all over the place. And it is something that leads to people being on the voter rolls, which, of course, is an important point to point out to everyone right now. The issue here is not necessarily that an illegal alien is 100% of the time going to go register to vote at the DMV or through the mail, and that they are then going to show up at the ballot box and themselves cast a vote. The issue here, of course, is that they are getting their name registered to vote. And when you have states all across the country

using mail-in ballots, right? This is all about ballot harvesting and getting as many names on as many ballots as you possibly can turned in, get the votes counted, of course, before anyone can do anything. And then at the end of the day, say, look, there's more ballots that were cast for,

you know, so-and-so than the other. Explain that. What do you mean? So Democratic operatives engaging in fraud would figure out who's an illegal and who's not and try to send in a ballot for this guy that he doesn't even know he's sending in? Look, that's certainly something that can happen. And it's certainly something that can happen, especially in transient communities. So if you're at an apartment, your listeners across the country will understand that if you're an apartment, it's oftentimes you'll get mail for the prior residents. It's especially going to be true in transient communities populated by immigrants. And so if you are somebody who gets registered to vote and you're in one of these

states that does 100% mail-in balloting, one of these states that makes it extremely easy to request your ballot to be sent in via the mail, and no one ever has to check or confirm that you are in fact a citizen, that at some point along the process that you produce documentation that shows that you are in fact a citizen of the United States, the recipes for fraud are almost unlimited in terms of what can possibly be done. How do we have any idea how many illegal aliens are currently registered or have been registered over the past few years in the United States and in particular in the swing states? It's a wonderful question. And I don't know that there's any kind of actual reliable evidence

indicating one number or another. The fact of the matter, though, is that there are millions upon millions of illegal aliens who have entered the United States over the last three and a half years. But they are here and they are loose in the United States. And when you look at the margin of victory in a place like Arizona or in a place like Georgia, where just a couple, you know, a couple thousand, 10,000, 20,000 votes can make the difference in the outcome of an election.

The recipe is there. And it's really a matter of how do we make sure that there are none on the voter rolls? If it's 100, that's a problem. If it's 1,000, it's a problem. If it's 100,000, it's a problem. Now, some of your listeners have probably seen in recent weeks, there have been a number of elected officials across the country putting out press releases, saying things like, hey, guess what? We removed 4,000 non-citizens from our voter rolls over the last year or so. 2,500 in Pennsylvania. Virginia's been cracking down. North Carolina identified more than 1,400. Yeah. Arizona said we've identified 42,000 people as federal-only registrants, which I don't totally understand. But yes, so more and more are coming out to say they're making this effort and they've

identified some. So keep going. Yeah, absolutely. So, and that's great. And what they're typically doing in those situations is using a system called SAVE that DHS administers. And so for your viewers at home and listeners at home, if they're think about it this way, DHS has a database that states are eligible to ping against.

But to use that database, to have it be reliable, you have to have some kind of an identifier that links the person to an identifier in the DHS database. And so that identifier tends to be what's known as an alien registration number. And so think of this as like you're searching for a friend on social media, right? And if you're searching for a friend and you have their email address, maybe you can actually find the person because you have their email address. But if you don't have their email address, you're never going to find the person. And this is depending on the privacy settings. And so this is the single point of failure for the save system is if you have someone who's registering to vote, whether that's with a federal form, and we can touch more on that in a minute, or whether it's somebody who registered

to vote at the DMV, chances are they didn't provide you with an alien registration. Chances are that they just gave you their name and their date of birth, which makes this DHS SAVE system essentially worthless to get four thousand people from our voter rolls using the DHS save system. Well, that's fabulous and that's great. Now, just imagine how many more you can do if you could instead search by things like a name and a date of birth. Hmm. OK, so you're saying there's a lot more on that federal registry who would be illegal. We just we don't have the technology right now to capture them. And so they will remain on the voter registration rules as illegal aliens. The system is flawed.

Well, yes and no. So the system that DHS built for the states to use called SAVE is flawed and it has that issue. But here's the great thing, and here's the fun thing for all of the states across the country, and it's actually part of a plan that we laid out for all of the states across the country to use, which is there's a law in the books, in the Immigration and Nationality Act, at 8 U.S.C. 1373. And it says that a state or local government can get information from the Department of Homeland Security to verify or ascertain the citizenship status of any individual in their jurisdiction for any purpose authorized under law, and that DHS has to provide that information to the state or the

locality. And so what DHS is doing is that they've been telling the states and the local governments, hey, you have to use this SAVE database, and you have to use this alien registration number as the query. Oh, and by the way, DHS charges the states and localities to use it. But there is a separate provision of law that no one was using up until recently that says that actually the states are entitled to receive this information as a matter of law. And it's about any individual and it's to ascertain or to verify their citizenship or immigration status for any purpose authorized under law. And so any purpose authorized under law certainly has to include ensuring that there are eligible voters on your voter rolls and there's not any illegal aliens or, for example, permanent residents or anyone else who's not entitled to vote

on the voter rolls. And so the states have the ability to ask DHS to give them the information that they need about anyone that they have any question about on their voter rolls. They just need the will to do it. Here's my question on that. They just need the will to do it. So they need the will to do it. But in my experience, the only states that would have the will to do it would be blue states, and they're not going to do it. I mean, and they don't, like, they're not going to do it. I mean, and they don't be like they're not going to. And the red states might want to do it, but that doesn't really help Republicans make sure there are fair elections. Right. So then what are the swing states do? The odds of the swing states

actually taking advantage of this, I think, are slim and none because I don't know, most of them tend to have Democratic governors. Yeah, look, it's a real conundrum, and you've identified it, is everyone should be doing this, though, because DHS has the capability to verify based on a name, based on a date of birth. They do have a technological capability of doing this. And so this is a matter of common sense. This is a matter of good government. This should not be a red or a blue issue or anything in between. This is a common sense measure that every state across the country should be using. And if the citizens of each state petition their leaders and they say, hey, look, why aren't we doing this one way or the other?

Why aren't we trying to make sure that there aren't people who shouldn't be on our voter rolls voting, regardless of how they vote? And this is one of these situations where the solution is there. The federal law provides a remedy, and the states can use it to get people off. Again, just a very good government kind of basic obligation thing to do. But because nobody... Don't you think that they'll slow roll it? This administration will be like, sure, we're definitely going to comply with your

many requests. And we'll get that information to you probably around February. Yeah, right. Well, so that's again, you've identified a very real problem, which is why what states need to do is give DHS hard and fast deadlines. And if DHS doesn't comply in a reasonable amount of time with the information the states are obligated to receive under federal law, the states should go into federal court and sue and demand immediate remedies to get the information that they need, given that there's an election coming up soon, given as you identified, early voting starts very soon in many states. And the time is now to act.

In Pennsylvania. Absolutely. September 16th. I mean, it's like right around the corner. So can you tell me, do you know what Virginia is doing? So I'm kind of interested in what Glenn Youngkin is doing down there. He clearly does care about voter integrity. It seems like he's making sure that, uh, there's going to be paper ballots there, uh, mandating a documented chain of custody for the paper ballots. Um, they don't

use voting machines down there, just paper ballot counting machines, but they also have to have the paper ballots retained for 22 months. Um, the, the absentee ballots seem to be more secure than they are in other states, requiring a Social Security match. I don't know. It seems like Glenn Youngkin is one governor who's in not exactly a swing state, but it's still a little purple trying to set things right. Yeah, it certainly seems that way. And his his efforts should be commended. Every governor across the country should be doing more and they should be doing as much as they possibly can do to do things that are just common sense. I mean, look, for the viewers and listeners at home, if you're elected officials are not doing things that would be common sense measures that you would think that

maybe even like the bank would require for you to be able to go take money out of your account, verifying your identity, ensuring that there's proper paper trails, doing all those types of good governance measures. You know, why shouldn't we expect the same of our elected leaders when it comes to our elections, when it comes time for the citizenry to, you know, cast the kind of the ultimate pinnacle of democratic action in society, which is casting that vote, that ballot, and getting that ballot counted properly and having it administered in a way that people can have confidence in the integrity of the system and in the future of their democratic society. Yeah. I mean, this is definitely something that people are very worried about on top of the issue of just stealing. You know, they're very worried about people stealing ballots and harvesting and taking it. But this is an area

that you're saying this is an area that can be exploited by bad actors. That's one of the many reasons it could be the illegal alien or it could be somebody who's taking advantage of the fact that there is an illegal alien who's registered, who might not know he's getting a ballot by mail, and Bob's your uncle. Boom. I mean, Biden won Georgia by 11,000 votes. That's just one state. So every vote counts, as we know. Gene, thank you. Thanks for all the great work you guys do at America First Legal. Love, love all of it. Thanks very much for having me on. Really appreciate it. All the best. And thanks to all of you for joining us today for this special deep dive into the problem of how to solve the illegal aliens voting in our elections. Back later today.

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