The right to vote is the most fundamental privilege of American citizenship. Not residency. Not presence. Citizenship. Every legal voter – whether a rancher in Montana or a shopkeeper in Philadelphia – gets one equal voice. That entire system collapses the moment someone who has no legal right to a ballot casts one anyway. And it collapses faster when the government holds the door open.
So what do you call it when a state official goes on community television to walk viewers through the easiest possible path to a ballot – and conveniently never mentions that you have to be a citizen? Good outreach? Honest mistake? Or something worse?
From Fox News:
The election system in Minnesota is facing scrutiny on social media after a clip of a state official speaking to Somali voters reignited concerns about election integrity in the state.
“If you’re already registered to vote, you don’t need to bring anything with you,” Minnesota Voter Outreach Director Melanie Hazelip said on Somali TV. “You just show up to your early voting location, which is usually the county office or City Hall. Minneapolis and the bigger jurisdictions have a lot of extra places where you can go, like a lot of libraries or community centers. As long as you’re registered to vote, you don’t need to bring anything with you. If you’re not registered to vote … you still have options. If you have a Minnesota ID that is updated, that’s all you need to bring with you. If you don’t have that, there is a list of documents on our website that you can find. You still have options to get registered same day.”
A system designed to look the other way
Here’s what matters: under 18 U.S.C. § 611, a noncitizen who votes in a federal election commits a crime punishable by fines and imprisonment. That’s not ambiguous. It’s federal law.
Minnesota’s system makes that crime shockingly easy to commit – and nearly impossible to detect. Governor Walz signed the “Driver’s Licenses For All” law in 2023, handing state IDs to noncitizens. Those IDs carry no citizenship markings whatsoever. They look identical to any other Minnesota license. And yes, they can be used to register to vote.
It gets worse. Minnesota allows same-day voter registration, and its vouching system lets a single registered voter sponsor up to eight people – no ID necessary. The only guardrail? A perjury oath. That’s it. No real-time citizenship check. No verification system. Just a signature and a promise.
Policy fellow Bill Glahn nailed the absurdity: “It’s like murder’s illegal, but it happens all the time.” He added that if someone “signed as Mickey Mouse, they’re not going to find you.” Comforting, isn’t it?
A state that knows fraud intimately
This isn’t some hypothetical nightmare. Minnesota has a rap sheet. The state hemorrhaged hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in the Feeding Our Future scandal. Federal agents have raided Medicaid fraud operations statewide. A noncitizen caught up in that fraud received a 30-year federal sentence.
And just last September, a federal grand jury indicted an illegal immigrant from India for falsely claiming citizenship to vote in Minnesota’s 2024 election. The crime Democrats swear never happens – happened.
Retired Navy intelligence officer Phillip Parrish captured the frustration perfectly: “This is how the system is built. It is not an accident.”
He’s right. Every illegal ballot cast neutralizes a legal citizen’s vote. That’s not a bureaucratic oversight or a policy disagreement. Under federal law, it is a crime. Minnesota’s leaders didn’t just fail to prevent it – they paved the road and posted the directions on Somali TV.
Key Takeaways
- Minnesota issues IDs to noncitizens with no citizenship markings – the same IDs used to register to vote.
- One registered voter can vouch for eight others at the polls with no identification required.
- Federal law criminalizes noncitizen voting, yet Minnesota’s system has zero real-time enforcement.
- The state has already lost hundreds of millions to fraud and now advertises the easiest path to a ballot.
Sources: Fox News
