Texas woman decides she can vote

[Value Buy]

even though she knew she was not a citizen.
She has held a green card for years and been a good documented non-citizen.
Her mother was deported while she was a teen.


www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-texas-woman-%E2%80%98voted-like-a-us-citizen%E2%80%99-only-she-wasn%E2%80%99t/ar-BBylpiO?li=BBnb7Kz

Now she faces a jail sentence and possible deportation for the offense.
How do you feel about this?

[mroped]

The mistake is in the "she registered to vote" part. How did she get registered?

Granted, she committed a federal offense by illegally voting but why deport her? Do we deport all the federal offenders? Or we need an "example" again?

[Value Buy]

I honestly feel torn by this case. If she serves the sentence, I almost lean towards letting her stay.
On the other hand she was trying to vote, possibly affecting the outcome of a close election.
How many incorrect votes does it take to influence an election?

I hold the right to vote as sacred, and should not be violated by anyone.
She knew she was breaking the law, violating our voting system.

Hate to say it, but she should be deported.

[Tennesseer]

And she voted for two Republican candidates too, including Mitt Romney. 'Mitt Momentum' indeed.

[buystoys]

This particular case was discussed here earlier this year.  Voter fraud is a felony.  If you commit a felony and are not a U.S. citizen, then you can be deported.  She claims she didn't know the difference between resident and citizen, so said she was a citizen in Dallas county and a resident in Tarrant county. 

Ortega

She came to the U.S. as a child and took the steps to become a legal resident.  However, she lied when she said she was a U.S. citizen and that is a felony.  When you commit a felony, you have to be ready to accept the sentence.  I don't have an issue with her deportation because of her own actions.  Would we decide to not sentence someone who IS a U.S. citizen?  I can find plenty of articles that discuss their penalties. 

I believe she just didn't think she'd ever get caught or if she did get caught, that she'd ever have to face the potential punishment. 

[citizensunite]

Clearly the system is flawed if she was permitted to register in the first place. Ignorance of the law is not a defense. Those who do the registering are not informed enough to do the job properly. With all the technology available today, there should be no reason why anyone who is here on a visa or green card or illegally should not be in a system somewhere that, when they register to vote or whatever, something should be triggered to not allow it. 

[tallguy]

Regardless of how anyone feels about this, can we at least agree that if this one case is this newsworthy that it is beyond ludicrous to even suggest that millions of illegals are regularly voting?    

[citizensunite]

I don't think it's ludicrous at all. I think illegals have been voting for years and quite possibly being paid by one party or another to do so (or not) but I have no doubt they've voted. I believe the ONLY reason it's become "newsworthy" is because of all the hoopla surrounding it in the last few elections. 

[billisonboard]

I would support a hearing being held by a competent official and that person using their best judgement to determine if this was an honest mistake of what was allowable or an act knowingly undertaken as illegal.  If the ruling is that she knowingly acted illegally, I have no problem with her being deported.

[buystoys]

Here's a link to the story when it originally ran in 2015:

NBC

From the article:

Ortega applied to vote in Tarrant County and acknowledged on the application form that she was not a citizen, White said. The county rejected her application and notified her she was not qualified to vote.

But five months later, she applied again and this time claimed she was a citizen, White said.Ortega never did vote in Tarrant County, but investigators learned she had voted in Dallas County, he said.


Source: Woman Jailed on Charge of Illegal Voting | NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Woman-Jailed-on-Charge-of-Illegal-Voting-342158051.html#ixzz4boXAlTz2

Follow us: @nbcdfw on Twitter | NBCDFW on Facebook

[Deleted]

Mar 19, 2017 8:21:17 GMT -5 mroped said:

The mistake is in the "she registered to vote" part. How did she get registered?

Granted, she committed a federal offense by illegally voting but why deport her? Do we deport all the federal offenders? Or we need an "example" again?

How about we deport all illegals guilty of a crime... (for reference, being here illegally is a crime)

[NastyWoman]

Mar 19, 2017 9:05:49 GMT -5 citizensunite said:

Clearly the system is flawed if she was permitted to register in the first place. Ignorance of the law is not a defense. Those who do the registering are not informed enough to do the job properly. With all the technology available today, there should be no reason why anyone who is here on a visa or green card or illegally should not be in a system somewhere that, when they register to vote or whatever, something should be triggered to not allow it. 

This is just a matter of government systems not being utilized properly. Since all alien residents are required to be registered (address included) in a database owned and maintained by the DHS. If this woman was here since she was a little child and as "well" educated as many HS dropouts/grads seem to be, I am not amazed at all that she would think that, as a registered voter, she was eligible to vote.   while she may just as easily could have intended to commit fraud, it is time we stop making excuses for those people who could have prevented this from happening in the first place, by EXERCISING BASIC PRECAUTIONS! 

[buystoys]

Mar 19, 2017 20:37:43 GMT -5 NastyWoman said:

Mar 19, 2017 9:05:49 GMT -5 citizensunite said:

Clearly the system is flawed if she was permitted to register in the first place. Ignorance of the law is not a defense. Those who do the registering are not informed enough to do the job properly. With all the technology available today, there should be no reason why anyone who is here on a visa or green card or illegally should not be in a system somewhere that, when they register to vote or whatever, something should be triggered to not allow it. 

This is just a matter of government systems not being utilized properly. Since all alien residents are required to be registered (address included) in a database owned and maintained by the DHS. If this woman was here since she was a little child and as "well" educated as many HS dropouts/grads seem to be, I am not amazed at all that she would think that, as a registered voter, she was eligible to vote.   while she may just as easily could have intended to commit fraud, it is time we stop making excuses for those people who could have prevented this from happening in the first place, by EXERCISING BASIC PRECAUTIONS! 

Please see my reply #9.  When this was first aired in 2015, it came out that she had been told she was not eligible to vote as a resident.  She lied on her attempt in Dallas county and said she was a U.S. citizen in order to vote.  Fraud is pretty obvious if that is the actual sequence of events.

Agree that we don't need to make excuses for ANYONE who commits fraud regardless of their legal status.  Some people seem to think it's OK to ignore felonies if they're committed by someone who isn't here legally while ignoring those same activities when done by a U.S. citizen.  I just don't get it. 

[buystoys]

Mar 19, 2017 8:21:17 GMT -5 mroped said:

The mistake is in the "she registered to vote" part. How did she get registered?

Granted, she committed a federal offense by illegally voting but why deport her? Do we deport all the federal offenders? Or we need an "example" again?

If the offender is a U.S. citizen, where would you like to see them be deported to?    Maybe Pennsylvania?

We should be deporting all federal offenders who are not U.S. citizens.  The fact that we have not been doing so is the problem, not the fact that we are now enforcing the laws of our country.

Please feel free to read my reply #9.  It seems as though she knew she was not eligible to vote as a legal resident, so lied on her application in Dallas county in order to be able to vote.

[Value Buy]

Mar 19, 2017 8:58:10 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

And she voted for two Republican candidates too, including Mitt Romney. 'Mitt Momentum' indeed.

I assure you, it does not matter who she voted for with me.
This happens to be a line in the sand that is not crossed with aliens, whether legal or illegal
Rule of law.........and what not.

[Value Buy]

Mar 19, 2017 12:54:50 GMT -5 tallguy said:

Regardless of how anyone feels about this, can we at least agree that if this one case is this newsworthy that it is beyond ludicrous to even suggest that millions of illegals are regularly voting?    

She was not an illegal. She decided to break the law anyway.
As American citizens seem to be held to a higher standard concerning our laws than illegal aliens in America, so too, are green card holders

[Tennesseer]

insert code here

Mar 20, 2017 8:19:47 GMT -5 Value Buy said:

Mar 19, 2017 8:58:10 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

And she voted for two Republican candidates too, including Mitt Romney. 'Mitt Momentum' indeed.

I assure you, it does not matter who she voted for with me.
This happens to be a line in the sand that is not crossed with aliens, whether legal or illegal
Rule of law.........and what not.

It may not matter to you but paul and trump claim illegal voters vote for democrats.

[Value Buy]

I am still on the sidelines on that one!

[busymom]

Maybe since she's been voting Republican, our POTUS will issue a presidential pardon.  

[Miss Tequila]

Mar 19, 2017 20:37:43 GMT -5 NastyWoman said:

Mar 19, 2017 9:05:49 GMT -5 citizensunite said:

Clearly the system is flawed if she was permitted to register in the first place. Ignorance of the law is not a defense. Those who do the registering are not informed enough to do the job properly. With all the technology available today, there should be no reason why anyone who is here on a visa or green card or illegally should not be in a system somewhere that, when they register to vote or whatever, something should be triggered to not allow it. 

This is just a matter of government systems not being utilized properly. Since all alien residents are required to be registered (address included) in a database owned and maintained by the DHS. If this woman was here since she was a little child and as "well" educated as many HS dropouts/grads seem to be, I am not amazed at all that she would think that, as a registered voter, she was eligible to vote.   while she may just as easily could have intended to commit fraud, it is time we stop making excuses for those people who could have prevented this from happening in the first place, by EXERCISING BASIC PRECAUTIONS! 

So if a homeowner is robbed because they didn't properly secure their property, it is their fault and not that of the robber? 

[Green Eyed Lady]

Always somebody else's fault other than the person who actually did it. Always.  But? Exercise basic precautions at an airport and all hell breaks loose.

[Green Eyed Lady]

Obviously, we should find out how she was allowed to register. That's a no-brainer. There is a difference between an honest mistake and intentional fraud. Just because someone else made a mistake doesn't give one license to break the law nor should it keep them from the consequences of doing so.

[NastyWoman]

Mar 20, 2017 9:56:52 GMT -5 Green Eyed Lady said:

Obviously, we should find out how she was allowed to register. That's a no-brainer. There is a difference between an honest mistake and intentional fraud. Just because someone else made a mistake doesn't give one license to break the law nor should it keep them from the consequences of doing so.

To be accurate I never said this woman should have voted. What I DID say that there is a case of either a highly ineffective government system, or just plain old negligence by those who registered her to vote. Different issues, both of which need to be looked at and dealt with. And if it turns out that the person who is responsible for registering her to vote was sloppy, s/he should at least be written up for this. If we are not using the existing systems as they are intended, then culpability for that is at a higher level and it needs to be addressed now, not next week, next month, or next year. Now!

[Green Eyed Lady]

Mar 20, 2017 10:08:55 GMT -5 NastyWoman said:

Mar 20, 2017 9:56:52 GMT -5 Green Eyed Lady said:

Obviously, we should find out how she was allowed to register. That's a no-brainer. There is a difference between an honest mistake and intentional fraud. Just because someone else made a mistake doesn't give one license to break the law nor should it keep them from the consequences of doing so.

To be accurate I never said this woman should have voted. What I DID say that there is a case of either a highly ineffective government system, or just plain old negligence by those who registered her to vote. Different issues, both of which need to be looked at and dealt with. And if it turns out that the person who is responsible for registering her to vote was sloppy, s/he should at least be written up for this. If we are not using the existing systems as they are intended, then culpability for that is at a higher level and it needs to be addressed now, not next week, next month, or next year. Now!

I don't even remember where I registered to vote.  If it is at the county courthouse by county employees, I'm sure there is already a method in place to consequence those who make mistakes.  It's not something new or something that will never happen again.  Of course, you find out what happened and try your best to make sure it doesn't happen again.  That goes without saying.  As for use of the existing system, I agree with you; all the while knowing there can be errors in that system also.  Nothing is perfect but I agree we should strive to make it so.

My issue here is that we can't even have a post about what this woman did without trying to find someone else to blame or at least share in the blame.  She knew what she was doing was wrong (if the article is correct in stating she changed her citizen status on her second try) but she went ahead and did it anyway.  That's her fault and the blame doesn't lie elsewhere.  Just because somebody leaves their car door unlocked does not give me license to take their CDs.

We're damned if we do and we're damned if we don't.  Don't take enough precautions?  Take too many precautions?  When somebody figures out the exact middle that will make everyone happy, they will be rich.  In the meantime, I'm going to blame the person who intentionally did something wrong and be confident that the department who made the mistake will take care of it themselves.

[buystoys]

In Texas, you can register to vote online or at the DMV.  I believe they also have voter registration available at the county tax offices.  In my county, the DMV is in the same building as the county courthouse, but you have to go into the DMV office for voter registration.

[OldCoyote]

Mar 20, 2017 9:50:06 GMT -5 Miss Tequila said:

Mar 19, 2017 20:37:43 GMT -5 NastyWoman said:

This is just a matter of government systems not being utilized properly. Since all alien residents are required to be registered (address included) in a database owned and maintained by the DHS. If this woman was here since she was a little child and as "well" educated as many HS dropouts/grads seem to be, I am not amazed at all that she would think that, as a registered voter, she was eligible to vote.   while she may just as easily could have intended to commit fraud, it is time we stop making excuses for those people who could have prevented this from happening in the first place, by EXERCISING BASIC PRECAUTIONS! 

So if a homeowner is robbed because they didn't properly secure their property, it is their fault and not that of the robber? 

Yes, according to some posters here.

[mroped]

Federal offenders that committed a non violent crime and are US citizens should be exiled for a period of time set by the courts. 
The sentence should be executed at one of one of the two locations: Arctic or Antarctica, their choice.
Those on the list to spend time at these locations upon sentencing should include but not be limited to tax evasion, fraud of public funds, fraud committed while working for a publicly traded company, illegal possession of firearms and whatever the judges find fit as federal offense.
And yes, you can send them to Pa! We will dress them Amish and make them work the fields by hand. Also, there will be no phones, tv or cars. Walking everywhere!

[NastyWoman]

Mar 20, 2017 9:50:06 GMT -5 Miss Tequila said:

Mar 19, 2017 20:37:43 GMT -5 NastyWoman said:

This is just a matter of government systems not being utilized properly. Since all alien residents are required to be registered (address included) in a database owned and maintained by the DHS. If this woman was here since she was a little child and as "well" educated as many HS dropouts/grads seem to be, I am not amazed at all that she would think that, as a registered voter, she was eligible to vote.   while she may just as easily could have intended to commit fraud, it is time we stop making excuses for those people who could have prevented this from happening in the first place, by EXERCISING BASIC PRECAUTIONS! 

So if a homeowner is robbed because they didn't properly secure their property, it is their fault and not that of the robber? 

It is not unheard of for insurance companies to think this. And in this case it is someone's job to process this registration.  Basic care is expected at just about any job I know about. Don't apply it and in many cases your booty is out the door!

[Miss Tequila]

Mar 20, 2017 12:50:53 GMT -5 NastyWoman said:

Mar 20, 2017 9:50:06 GMT -5 Miss Tequila said:

So if a homeowner is robbed because they didn't properly secure their property, it is their fault and not that of the robber? 

It is not unheard of for insurance companies to think this

But should a policemen? Or is the burglar still going to jail for breaking the law?

[milee]

Mar 20, 2017 10:08:55 GMT -5 NastyWoman said:

Mar 20, 2017 9:56:52 GMT -5 Green Eyed Lady said:

Obviously, we should find out how she was allowed to register. That's a no-brainer. There is a difference between an honest mistake and intentional fraud. Just because someone else made a mistake doesn't give one license to break the law nor should it keep them from the consequences of doing so.

To be accurate I never said this woman should have voted. What I DID say that there is a case of either a highly ineffective government system, or just plain old negligence by those who registered her to vote. Different issues, both of which need to be looked at and dealt with. And if it turns out that the person who is responsible for registering her to vote was sloppy, s/he should at least be written up for this. If we are not using the existing systems as they are intended, then culpability for that is at a higher level and it needs to be addressed now, not next week, next month, or next year. Now!

Please describe what system should be used to verify the citizenship of people registering to vote, because our government does not have anything like an accurate, comprehensive, searchable database against which one can verify citizenship right now.   Requiring people registering to vote to present picture ID has been challenged as racist and/or anti-poor.  And the government has shown it's not able to provide employers with a reliable way to verify if potential employees are citizens; the E-Verify system is known to have a large error rate.  A fact I bring up repeatedly when people propose to prosecute employers that hire employees that are not US citizens; if the government can't accurately confirm that an applicant is legal, how the heck am I as an employer supposed to know? 

A description of some of the issues with verifying if a potential employee is eligible to work in the US (which is the same issue faced with verifying if someone is eligible to vote):

object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa775_1.pdf

The idea of running workers’ identity information past government databases sounds simple—but it is not—as experience with EVerify helps to show. It has not had the effects imagined by the supporters of interior enforcement of immigration law.

....

E-Verify has a strikingly high false-negative error rate that undercuts its utility. Because the heart of E-Verify is comparison between a name and Social Security number, it is often unable to detect when unauthorized workers are using false documents obtained via fraud and identity theft. An unauthorized worker who uses blatantly false or forged identification documents such as a fake driver’s license and an uncorrelated Social Security number will usually be discovered because E-Verify runs name and SSN correlations by the Social Security Administration.

However, documents obtained with a valid but fraudulently used number, such as a number belonging to a recently deceased individual, will usually be returned as verified. In other words, E-Verify can only confirm the correlation of the name and underlying SSN. E-Verify cannot tell the employer, for instance, that the SSN handed to him by a Hispanic job applicant in 2015 in Texas actually belongs to an 11-year old girl who died in Minnesota decades ago, because the first level E-Verify check does not match against death records. A recent report by the Social Security Administration found that approximately 6.5 million SSNs that were issued to Americans born 112 years ago or earlier do not have a death date listed in the SSA’s computer database. Those SSNs can be entered into E-Verify and it would not recognize that
they belong to deceased persons. As the SSA report confirms, individuals using 66,920 of those 6.5 million SSNs had approximately $3.1billion in wages, tips, and self-employment income for the 2006–2011 tax years. Between fiscal years 2008 and 2011, SSA received 4,024 E-Verify inquiries using the SSNs of 3,873 number holders born before June 16, 1901.

E-Verify’s actual accuracy rate is difficult to determine because it just checks the documents and not the worker himself. This leads to the most damning indictment of E-Verify as a tool to force unlawful immigrants out of the labor market: according to a USCIS-ordered audit of E-Verify conducted by the research firm Westat, an estimated 54 percent of unauthorized workers submitted to E-Verify were incorrectly found to be work authorized because of rampant document fraud.

....

Its inaccuracy is also a serious problem for American workers wrongly accused of being unauthorized....If the roughly 122 million native-born employees
in the United States at the end of 2014 were all run through E-Verify, between 370,000 and 1.2 million of them would be initially granted an erroneous TNC if the error rates stayed the same....Since E-Verify has been concentrated on small populations of American workers that are less likely to have identity errors in the government databases, a universal mandate would likely result in higher erroneous TNC and FNC rates.

The error rate for FNCs—final nonconfirmations— is also alarming.... If E-Verify were mandated nationwide and all employees had to run their information through the system, that seemingly small error rate would issue around 180,000 FNCs, keeping eligible American workers from working.