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Notes -
I don’t disagree with the majority of what you write here, my point is just that none of it necessitates the physical flesh-and-blood body of the illegal immigrant and their active participation in the scheme. Most illegal immigrants with fake ID/SSN/etc take them from dead people, duplicate living people’s identities (with or without their permission) etc. If you just need this information to register and then collect an illegitimate vote, why do you need the illegal when you can cut out the middleman and do it yourself?
You suggest it’s in the interests of illegals immigrants to join a political machine and to vote in their own interests (presumably in favor of candidates more likely to offer them amnesty / sanctuary and so on). But this isn’t how most illegal migrants in the US think. Many have little understanding of sanctuary policy (which is why eg so few have come forward to collect welfare or college assistance or healthcare entitlements in blue states that specifically fund these services for ‘undocumented’ people). Most illegal immigrants think enforcement is much tougher than it is and that anything conspicuous could result in them being caught by ICE and deported, they aren’t typically going to trust some Dem operative telling them it’s a sure thing to vote illegally don’t worry about it. Their goal is typically to minimize as far as possible their involvement with the federal government and to stay under the radar, and they consider voting to be an interaction with that government.
Illegals are in almost all cases coming from countries where the peasantry has no real influence on political elites, or they think it doesn’t. They don’t conceive themselves as having a real opportunity to change their circumstances by voting. They don’t want to join a political machine.
Shady behavior around ballot harvesting is much more likely to involve low-propensity-to-vote citizens than it is to involve illegal migrants.
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