Sean Hannity has shocking news.
We’ve got to turn to a very shocking story. It should make your blood boil.
The story concerns voting rights in San Francisco.
They’re now spitting in the face of every single law-abiding American tonight.
The spitting in our faces, assuming that we are all law-abiding and American, actually does concern a serious issue. It seems San Francisco politicians are about to seriously dilute the votes of legitimate citizens by registering immigrants.
City officials are now permitting illegal immigrants, other non-citizens, to register to vote in November’s election.
That is outrageous.
I’m against voter suppression laws, including laws that make it disproportionately inconvenient for some citizens to vote. And I get kind of mad at efforts by Republicans to make it harder to vote for people without drivers’ licenses, even when they have other forms of identification. People who ride the bus to work should not have to visit multiple agencies to get a picture ID, unless there is a compelling reason. If you have an election official assigned to visit homes with a camera, I’d be for it.
Not all restrictions are bad. Before Georgia State Representative Jimmy Carter became Governor Jimmy Carter, then President Jimmy Carter, he fought to restrict voting in Georgia to people who were still alive.
Seriously? Seriously.
For more than a hundred years before that, the immediate family of a voter who had recently died could certify in writing that they knew how the beloved deceased would have voted. And that vote would count. Yikes.
Later, President Carter worked for national standards against illegal voting. For the first time, anyone deliberately casting an illegal vote anywhere in the country would not only face extreme financial fines, but would also be looking at long prison sentences.
A while back, conservative activists tried to secretly record themselves voting in New Hampshire. They wanted to prove voter fraud was easy to get away with. The extreme fines and potential prison time may have been the reason one ran out of an election office chased by authorities. The conservative video had to be severely edited.
Harsh penalties work. Additional IDs do not. They only make voting harder for citizens who don’t already have them. That seems to be their purpose.
Still, when I cast my vote for President or Governor or Senator, I don’t want my vote diminished by having citizens of other countries vote. That’s just not fair.
The outrage about San Francisco is spreading through the conservative community. The headline in the Daily Caller is in all caps…
SO WOKE! ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS WILL BE VOTING IN LOCAL SAN FRANCISCO ELECTIONS THIS FALL. WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
Local attorney and Republican activist Harmeet Dhillon poses the question.
Why are noncitizens — legal and illegal — being invited to vote in the first place, in school board elections or, as in some other jurisdictions, other municipal elections?
My long time friend, conservative T. Paine takes note, putting scare quotes around immigrants:
These “immigrants,” illegal or not, will be allowed to vote in all city elections if they’re at least 18 and are the parents or guardians of children who also live in the city.
So wait. We’re not talking about national or even state offices?
Sean Hannity does get around to saying this:
That’s right. You can literally, you can’t make this up. They’re allowing this. Barring any future legal action, illegal immigrants will now be among those in San Francisco who get to vote in certain local elections.
Oddly enough, Mr. Hannity doesn’t mention that at the beginning of his angry presentation.
As my friend T. Paine points out:
These “immigrants,” illegal or not, will be allowed to vote in all city elections…
That would be city elections.
Still, when I cast my vote for mayor or council member, or even city clerk, I don’t want my vote diminished by having citizens of other countries vote. Again, that’s just not fair. So why did San Francisco politicians impose that on city voters?
Turns out they didn’t. Here’s a more complete story from KPIX-5 in San Francisco:
San Francisco is making some history by becoming the first city in the state to allow non-citizens to vote in school board elections.
School board elections? Really? School board? Well, in fairness to Sean Hannity, he does say this a while into his outrage:
…illegal immigrants will now be among those in San Francisco who get to vote in certain local elections.
Did you get it that time? The word certain?
It’s kind of understandable that my friend T. Paine might miss the word certain if he were to rely on Mr. Hannity for his facts.
Still, I think we should all agree that politicians should not be imposing even something this limited on city voters. Here’s Jessica Flores, reporting for KPIX television, with more complete story:
This comes after San Francisco voters approved Proposition N in 2016 giving undocumented and documented parents the new voting right.
So voters themselves approved the change? My friend must have overlooked this. Could be he relied too much on Fox News and Sean Hannity.
Turns out there is more from Jessica Flores:
They also caution parents to know the risks. The federal government can have access to voter information.
Does that mean what I think it means?
I did a little checking. It wasn’t hard. In fact, it was so easy my friend could have managed it, busy and important as he is.
When a non-citizen registers to vote, a form must be filled out and signed. The warning to anyone who does not have legal immigration papers is about as clear as could be. And it is translated into every language the Board of Elections could think of. Here it is:
Any information you provide to the Department of Elections, including your name and address, may be obtained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other agencies, organizations, and individuals.
So, if you are an immigrant (no scare quotes, Mr. Paine), who is not here legally, you can vote. But only for School Board. Then, you will be turned in to immigration authorities. That would put a bit of a damper on things, wouldn’t it? Uh… that would be rhetorical, my old friend.
And the next sentence applies to immigrants who are here legally:
In addition, if you apply for naturalization, you will be asked whether you have ever registered or voted in a federal, state, or local election in the United States.
So, if you are an immigrant who is here legally, you can vote. But you’ll have to explain that to some unsympathetic bureaucrat if you ever want to become a United States citizen. They don’t like that.
Oh my.
Members of the Board of Education are elected every four years. The measure will expire in 4 years. So I suppose we could consider it a bit of an experiment. If it works out … well … maybe voters will want to make it permanent.
Now, I can maybe understand why city residents might have wanted to pass this. Public education is not voluntary. It’s been a requirement since the early 1800s. Over a third of kids in local San Francisco schools have parents who came from other countries. The thought is that if we’re going to take your kids without your permission, you ought to have a voice in how they are treated and taught.
City voters, legal voters, did approve the idea by an 8 point margin.
Still, had I been a resident, I probably would have been on the losing side. I can see the arguments for inclusion, but I would have been disinclined to allow immigrants, legal or not, to vote in any election. I would have stood with citizenship no matter how limited the change or how good the reasons. At least I think I would. There may be arguments I have not heard.
I am impressed by the dishonesty by those who ought to have known better. It is as if they have no confidence in real facts, or their own persuasiveness using just those facts. They seem almost instinctively to help out the truth with a few alternative facts of their own. In some quarters, we refer to those alternatives as lies.
When Mr. Paine writes this:
… “immigrants,” illegal or not, will be allowed to vote in all city elections…
… he is understandably confused. He is an honorable man whose attention has been captured by those who are without honor.
When Mr. Hannity says this:
… illegal immigrants will now be among those in San Francisco who get to vote in certain local elections …
… he intends to mislead viewers like my victimized friend.
When Mr. Hannity says this:
They’re now spitting in the face of every single law-abiding American…
…and fails to tell my friend that those law-abiding Americans are the ones who passed the new rule, and passed it with a significant majority, it is a deliberate attempt to trick him. Sadly, the attempt succeeds with Mr. Paine.
Mr. Hannity also tells my friend this:
You can’t make this up.
Well… yeah, Mr. Hannity. You can.
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Your friend, T. Paine, use to be smarter. At one time he would not have made this mistake. I would postulate that conservatism is an illness that causes mental degradation. T. Paine is Exhibit 1.
“He is an honorable man whose attention has been captured by those who are without honor.”
At some point, an honorable man must be expected to recognize when his sources mislead him and do something about it, otherwise his honor can no longer be taken for granted.
However, I see no mention of Hannity in T. Paine’s post. He apparently heard it from “Local ABC 7 affiliate.”
Furthermore, even with all of the facts on the table, I think that this is good ammunition for conservatives. It may not be the case that liberals across the country would support this measure and it may not even be the case that liberals within this part of California would favor expanding voting rights even further, but it *is* a significant change and it *is* the sort of thing that conservatives have been saying liberals want for a while now.
The case for these voting rights is not totally without merit; even conservatives should acknowledge that it is desirable that one have a say about the educational system if one’s children are required to participate in it. However, along the same lines, one could argue that we do not owe this to people who do not have our permission to be here. But I suppose that, as long as it remains a matter left to local voters that must be reconsidered from time to time and illegal immigrants do not eventually also get the power to participate in *that* vote, it is neither a threat to anyone nor any concern of mine as a non-local. It certainly doesn’t rate among my top concerns in the age of Trump and conservatives run amok. I just hope that it isn’t successfully used to rally Trump supporters and dissuade independents from participating in the midterms.
What really irritates me about T. Paine’s “analysis” is his attempt to equate a community allowing very limited and temporary voting rights to illegal immigrants who reside and have interests in that community with a foreign government attempting to influence our presidential election for its own benefit through targeted attacks and disinformation. The two situations are not similar at all. Even if they were, consistent conservatives who are outraged by the San Francisco situation should be outraged by Russia’s interference too. But we get none of that from him. This is just another attempt to deflect with false equivalency and turn the tables on liberals — because that is the sort of person he is.
Of course, unable to help himself, he goes on to add: “[San Francisco] is a perfect example of the abject failure of social and political progressivism.” The successes of social and political progressivism are always to be ignored along with the failures of social and political conservatism.
I would suggest to be conservative in American politics, especially in recent decades, is to be taken in by lies. Lies are a feature, not a bug, of right-wing media.