Exclusive — 30 Years of ‘Motor Voter’ Law: Nearly 400 Foreigners Found on Chicago’s Voter Rolls Since 2007

Almost 400 foreign nationals have been found on voter rolls in Cook County, Illinois, home to the city of Chicago, and subsequently asked to have their registrations canceled since 2007, according to election data shared with Breitbart News.

The data, gathered by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), shows that 394 foreign nationals had their voter registrations canceled in Cook County over the last 16 years after notifying election officials that they were wrongfully registered.

This figure does not include foreign nationals who are registered to vote in Cook County but have not asked to be removed from voter rolls.

Many of those formerly registered foreign nationals, according to the documents, clearly stated on forms that they were not in fact American citizens but were seemingly registered anyway.

At fault, PILF President J. Christian Adams told Breitbart News, is the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 known as “Motor Voter.” The law requires states’ Department of Motor Vehicles to offer voter registration while applicants secure a driver’s license.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of President Bill Clinton signing Motor Voter into law. The reality of Motor Voter is an issue that lawmakers must face head-on, Adams said.

“This is the part that the Left can’t escape from — they can’t escape these documents,” Adams told Breitbart News. “This is what thirty years of Motor Voter looks like.”

“They’re just getting a driver’s license, they say they’re not a citizen, and then they’re on the voter rolls,” Adams told Breitbart News. “It’s not a conspiracy, it’s bureaucracy.”

In one particular instance, according to the documents from PILF, a foreign national clearly stated that she was not an American citizen and mistakenly wrote that she was born in 2019, the date of the application.

Still, election officials seemingly registered the woman to vote.

Documents via Public Interest Legal Foundation

Of those nearly 400 foreign nationals found on Cook County’s voter rolls and who asked to be removed, 20 had allegedly cast 85 ballots over the course of numerous election cycles, according to the PILF documents. In 2019, 122 foreign nationals in Chicago had their registrations canceled after notifying election officials — the most in a single year since 2007.

The average length of time that a foreign national, who reported being wrongfully registered, stayed on Cook County’s voter rolls is 7.5 years, the documents show, with the longest single wrongful registration spanning across 30 years.

Adams told Breitbart News that politicians are likely unaware that such widespread issues are occurring with Motor Voter.

“Even the Democrats who have oversight, they’ve probably never seen this report, they don’t know that this is happening,” he said. “They do bear some blame.”

To fix the problem, Adams said, Congress ought to allow states to validate American citizenship before a registration form is ever filled out — a policy that Arizona, Kansas, and Georgia have tried to implement with resistance from the federal government.

“Loosen Motor Voter and give states the power to validate citizenship before registration. Right now, that power is stripped away,” Adams said. “… documented proof of citizenship is one way to do it. There are ways to do it.”

The Cook County documents are only the latest to be published by PILF.

As Breitbart News reported last month, similar documents out of Maricopa County, Arizona showed that Motor Voter had seen more than 200 foreign nationals wrongfully registered and subsequently removed from voter rolls since 2015.

“There’s nobody out there for 30 years studying ‘Are foreigners voting? How are they voting? How big is the problem?'” Adams said. “I’m amazed that none of this research has been replicated. This is real and it’s happening.”

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.