Democrats are quick to smear election integrity legislation as racist, but a recent discovery proves just how easy it is for people to commit fraud.
Last week, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents seized 1,200 counterfeit driver’s licenses from more than 20 states, according to the agency’s website.
The fake IDs were part of three shipments from Hong Kong declared as $20 worth of “Game Card,” with one labeled for a Chicago destination and the other two headed for New York.
Last week, CBP officers working in Indianapolis detained shipments that were arriving from Hong Kong mis-manifested as “Game Card” with a value of $20. Officers inspected the shipments and found nearly 1.2K counterfeit state driver's licenses.
Details: https://t.co/fJW4mlftK3 pic.twitter.com/Z5S70hmdqL
— CBP (@CBP) January 23, 2022
Many of the identification cards reused photos with different names and had dates of birth consistent with people of college age.
They were knock-offs of licenses from states including Michigan, Pennsylvania, California, Texas, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, Illinois and Ohio.
“Counterfeit driver’s licenses have historically been used by those under 21 years of age for the illegal consumption of alcohol, but fake IDs have also been used in criminal enterprises, such as identity theft cases and immigration fraud,” Chief CBP Officer Tim Hubbard said of the discovery.
“Customs and Border Protection officers will continue to be vigilance during enforcement operations, and we remain committed to the safety and security of our nation,” he said.
Though there is no indication of the intended purpose of these fake licenses, it’s noteworthy that this discovery comes at a time when Democrats are trying to stop any and all laws that promote secure elections — including voter ID requirements.
Earlier this month, President Joe Biden called such efforts “Jim Crow 2.0,” an insulting claim that assumes black people are unable to handle basic tasks such as securing state-issued identification or casting a ballot on Election Day without major hardship.
“Jim Crow 2.0 is about two insidious things: voter suppression and election subversion,” Biden claimed in his remarks in Georgia on Jan. 11.
“It’s no longer about who gets to vote; it’s about making it harder to vote. It’s about who gets to count the vote and whether your vote counts at all,” the president said.
Some Republican legislators want “to turn the will of the voters into a mere suggestion,” President Biden says in a speech on election reform.
“Jim Crow 2.0 is about two insidious things: voter suppression and election subversion.” https://t.co/h2zUCgvdXF pic.twitter.com/OFlvQLSoyz— The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) January 11, 2022
Following the disputed 2020 presidential election, more than 400 bills and 34 laws were passed at state and local levels to shore up the integrity of elections with measures such as restricting who can request and cast absentee ballots, limiting ballot drop boxes and similar practices, and requiring voter identification.
These are reasonable measures given the importance of elections and the relative ease at which fraudsters can cast votes if they’re allowed to do so through the mail with no identification.
Now with this recent seizure of fake IDs, it’s abundantly clear that there is already a black market for fraudulent government-issued identification — so couldn’t there also be one for fraudulent ballots?
Verifying votes and matching them with real voters presents a myriad of challenges even in the best of circumstances where identification is required and in-person voting is the norm, with ballots never leaving the polling location before the vote is cast.
This underscores the utter insanity of Democrats’ claims that efforts to limit universal mail-in balloting or prevent ballot harvesting have anything to do with race when they’re obviously common-sense measures to protect the integrity of elections.
Democrats either believe their constituents — especially the minority ones — are too stupid to navigate the usual process, or they simply don’t think they can win without fraud.
Either way, they have no business blocking laws that make elections more secure.