In many states including New York, last Friday was the deadline to register to vote in time for this year’s presidential and congressional elections.

As of today there are six or seven states in the “tossup” category — depending on whether you ask Pollster.com, CNN or Real Clear Politics. In the midst of this close race, several states (including Virginia, one of the states that have retained battleground status over the past few months) are reporting record numbers of new voter registrations pouring into election offices. Undecided voters in those states have increasingly become the candidates’ elusive prey via a no-holds-barred multimedia ad blitz, as Feet in 2 Worlds has reported over the past few months.

Many constituencies have fallen into the “swing voter” category in this election cycle: Latinos, immigrants, white middle-class mothers, white working-class men, even so-called Reagan Democrats. With Barack Obama leading John McCain by only five percentage points in today’s daily Rasmussen tracking poll, these swing votes will prove crucial to winning in November.

According to a controversial new study, immigrants who are not American citizens are the latest addition to the swing voter crowd.

That’s the central claim of a new study [click for .pdf file] by David Simcox released last week under the title: How Many Non-Citizen Voters? Enough to Make a Difference: The Impact of Non-Citizen Voting on the American Elections.

The study alleges 1.2 to 2.7 million non-citizen immigrants have illegally registered to vote throughout the country, and could tip the balance of this year’s election.

However, civil and immigrant rights groups raised questions about the impartiality of the study, which was commissioned and released by The Social Contract Press, a publishing house headed by John Tanton.Tanton founded the national anti-immigrant group Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which the Southern Poverty Law Center recently added to its list of hate groups. (more…)