Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

The conclusion of an illegal-voter investigation by the Bexar County district attorney's office should put to rest the mythical conspiracy that unauthorized immigrants are using their coffee breaks at meatpacking plants and on farms throughout America to plot the takeover of the elections system.

As a member of the still-slumbering Hispanic voting giant, it's a sobering irony to be criticized as a group for not voting yet hear partisan zealots theorize that fresh-off-the-boat immigrants are organized enough to swing political races.

The district attorney's 16-month probe resulted in misdemeanor perjury charges against two people, both of whom are U.S. citizens. Their alleged crimes have nothing to do with voting, but rather lying about their citizenship status to get out of jury duty.

By coincidence or not, the investigation came on the heels of similar actions in recent years by Republican DAs and attorneys general around the United States.

Those efforts came up about as dry as the local effort.

A 2007 New York Times story found the following: “Five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and interviews.”

You don't trust the New York Times? Then consider the 2006 bipartisan report by two consultants on behalf of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

“There is widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling-place fraud, or at least much less than is claimed, including voter impersonation, ‘dead' voters, noncitizen voting and felon voters,” the report said.

To be clear, that doesn't mean people don't cast ballots illegally. One illegal vote is too many in any election, and prosecutors should partner with local elections officials everywhere to root it out.

The issue here is whether it's part of an organized effort.

The results of the local investigation came after Bexar County Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen found that 330 apparent noncitizens had registered to vote — with 41 of them actually casting ballots — between 2001 and 2007.

Prosecutors said they would have brought charges against illegal voters but were constrained by a variety of circumstances, including a three-year statute of limitations. In two instances, First Assistant District Attorney Cliff Herberg told the San Antonio Express-News, charges weren't sought because of extenuating circumstances that would not “serve the interest of justice.”

Callanen cast further doubt on the conspiracy theory by telling the newspaper there was “nothing to indicate a systematic effort to register noncitizens.”

If voter fraud in general is our guiding concern — and it should be — let's go after the type that every politically savvy person knows is there and has been there for generations.

In Spanish-speaking neighborhoods, they are calledpolitiqueras. In other neighborhoods, they're called “vote chasers” or “vote harvesters.”

In any language, they are unscrupulous hired guns who prey on the elderly, disabled and the infirm. Sweet as pie, they slink around prior to an election and offer to request and fill out mail-in ballots for their victims.

What they don't reveal is they are working to steer votes to a candidate who has paid them to “deliver” votes to their candidacy.

It is most effective in school board elections, where 25 or 30 votes can be the difference between winning and losing.

If it's truly a law-and-order question, how about it? It happens in broad daylight every election.