Listen to their calls for fairness, ignore their prior words on elections

In San Francisco, the sanctuary city within the sanctuary state — run by the governor who has taken sanctuary from common sense — officials granted voting rights to non-citizens beginning this November. The measure allows local residents to only vote in local school board elections, but this has to be regarded as a foot-in-the-door policy in the heavily permissive state.

The concept is that qualifying residents will be able to now have a voice in matters concerning the schools their family members attend. “These people have been marginalized,” said Election Supervisor Sandra Lee Fewer, “and other people who are citizens who have the legal right to vote have dominated the conversation.” Note the implication this has somehow been unfair, and it is not considered unfair to have the votes of legal citizens diluted by others.

However, problems seem to be looming, and not just those obvious issues most will call to mind when granting the right to vote to non-citizens. Take a look at the parameters involved in this new policy:

City residents who are of legal voting age, not in prison or on parole for a felony conviction, and are parents, legal guardians, or legally recognized caregivers of children under the age of 19 living in San Francisco, can register to vote in school board elections — regardless of legal immigration status.

So a question: When it comes to registering the so-called “qualifying non-citizens”, how will that be determined? The very people who rail and wail against the supposedly hateful practice of employing voter ID — because it is racist, considered voter tampering, etc. — are now looking to register these non-citizens in their region. Then how do they expect to “qualify” them?

How will they establish they are of legal voting age? How do they prove they have no felony conviction? If they are undocumented how do they document they have children, and that they live in the district? All of this needs to be established using the hateful practices involved with voter ID. (Gasp!)

Rather than bring up something that can be construed as racist (an inevitability in these discussions) let me provide a pragmatic challenge. What is to keep people from coming in from outside the district to unduly influence the elections? How do you verify they should be voting on issues and not stuffing ballot boxes?

Given this is San Fran, and in California, it is not hysterical to assume that this will be used as a way open up more conventional voting to these non-citizens. You can already hear the argument being made: Hey, they are already voting on school board elections, it only makes sense they be allowed to vote on city/county/statewide issues.

The effort will surely be made, as this new allowance was approved after numerous previous attempts were voted down. (This attempt narrowly passed with a 54-46% vote.) It is easy to see that future repetitive attempts will follow in kind. But in all of this there is a tremendously huge blind spot revealed by these voting activists.

For San Francisco to make this move in the current climate is not dismissed as ironic; it is oblivious. Think of what these same leftist lawmakers are arguing about regarding the last Presidential election: the undue influence of outside interests on our electoral process. Now today, at the exact same time, they extend voting rights to non-citizens.

This is where the logic in California rests these days: The people opposed to voter ID will somehow qualify non-citizens to vote, in order to register foreigners while complaining about foreign influence on our elections. It would all be so funny if it were not so sad. And Pathetic. And…okay, it’s a little bit funny.