What do a Russian military attaché stationed in the District of Columbia, a foreign exchange student at American University, and an illegal alien living in Anacostia all have in common? Answer: None are U.S. citizens, yet the District of Columbia allows them to vote in its local elections. That’s wrong, and it’s time for Congress to change it.
The District of Columbia Council enacted the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act in November 2022, removing the prohibition on noncitizen voting – and even allowing for voting by illegal aliens. The new law went into effect in February of 2023. The following month, seven D.C. voters filed a lawsuit challenging the law on the grounds that allowing noncitizens to vote diluted the weight of citizens’ votes and discriminated against U.S. citizens living in D.C. In March of 2024, Judge Amy Berman Jackson, appointed by President Obama, tossed the case, declaring that the plaintiffs had no standing to sue.
Even the liberal Washington Post editorial board understands just how radical it is to allow illegal aliens to vote: “This newspaper has opposed efforts over the past decade to rewrite D.C.’s election code so green-card holders could vote,” it wrote in October 2022, in anticipation of the vote. “What’s now before the council is more radical. The proposal has been expanded to give voting rights in local elections to all noncitizen adults, regardless of whether they are in the country legally, so long as they’ve resided in the District for 30 days … There’s nothing in this measure to prevent employees at embassies of governments that are openly hostile to the United States from casting ballots.”
The Washington Post editorial board wasn’t alone in recognizing how radical the proposed law was – the District’s (very) liberal mayor, Muriel Bowser, would not sign it.
That the District of Columbia Council would enact radical legislation should not have been a surprise to anyone. This is, after all, the same governing body that was so determined to reduce the penalties for violent crimes in the District that when Mayor Bowser vetoed the council’s rewrite of the criminal code to lessen the penalties for violent crimes, it voted to override her veto. Not surprisingly, crime in the District is a significant problem, and it’s getting worse: Says the House Budget Committee in a recent report, “The nation’s capital is suffering the worst crime wave in [the] 21st century,” explaining, “Crime surged by nearly 40% last year, with over 270 murders, 950 carjackings, and 106 children shot – reminiscent of the 1990s crack epidemic.”
Making matters worse, local elections in the District of Columbia take place on the same days as federal elections – and, importantly, on the same ballots. To ensure that noncitizens do not vote in federal elections (which is still the law, even in the District of Columbia), the District of Columbia Board of Elections must now print separate ballots – one for citizens, and the other for noncitizens – and then must make sure that each voter gets the proper ballot, based on his or her citizenship status. That’s a logistical nightmare for an agency of a local government the competency of which is already suspect.
Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the authority “to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States …”
Recognizing Congress’ constitutional authority over the District of Columbia, U.S. Rep. Austin Pfluger, a second-term Republican Congressman from West-Central Texas, was the first to act – on the very first day of the 118th Congress, he introduced H.R. 192, which “prohibits an individual who is not a U.S. citizen from voting in any elections in the District of Columbia.” The bill was referred to the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, which held a legislative hearing on the bill last June, and which amended the bill to add a section repealing the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act at a business meeting of the committee last July.
This week, the bill will hit the House floor.
The good news is, the House is already on record on this issue – on February 9, 2023, 260 members of the House (218 Republicans and 42 Democrats) voted for Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer’s H.J.Res. 24, disapproving the action of the District of Columbia Council in approving the Local Resident Voting Right Amendment Act of 2022. That resolution, unfortunately, never received consideration in the Senate, so the new D.C. law was allowed to go into effect.
The issue is still the same – noncitizens have no business voting in American elections. This is the clearest case of foreign “election interference” one can imagine. It’s not even hidden, it’s right out in the open – under the current D.C. law, foreigners are literally allowed to cast votes in U.S. elections.
Eight years ago, and for much of the duration of the Trump presidency, we heard caterwauling from the radical left about their fear of “foreign influence” over the 2016 election. Why are they silent now, when it comes to the issue of noncitizen voting in local elections in the nation’s capital?
The House of Representatives should pass this bill on a bipartisan basis.
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