House Republicans will vote Thursday on legislation to ban noncitizens from voting in the nation’s capital after it was revealed that about 500 are on Washington, D.C., voter rolls.
‘If this voting bill can’t pass, everyone will be watching it very closely. It’s going to be proof positive: there are some Democrats who want illegal aliens to decide elections. “It will be clear that they do not want Americans to decide the American election,” President Mike Johnson said at a news conference Wednesday.
The legislation will almost certainly die in the Senate.
In a letter dated May 15, DC Board of Elections Chairman Gary Thompson revealed that there are 489 non-citizen registered voters in the district.
The DC City Council amended its code in 2023 to allow non-citizens to vote. It went a step further than other jurisdictions by allowing not only non-citizens but also those here illegally to participate in local elections.
Federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections.
D.C. residents were already allowed to vote while incarcerated, as were incarcerated felons in Maine and Vermont.
House Republicans will vote Thursday on legislation to ban noncitizens from voting in the nation’s capital after it was revealed that about 500 are on Washington, D.C., voter rolls.
Republicans questioned how election officials could differentiate between non-citizen voters and others and ensure that non-citizen voters only got one ballot for local elections.
‘Our system will also easily generate a unique ballot for a non-citizen, excluding the presence of any federal race. This is much like ensuring that a ballot for someone voting in the Republican primary does not include Democratic races, and vice versa, Thompson said.
‘You know, why should anyone in the Russian embassy be able to vote in elections here in the United States of America? However, that is what is allowed today,” Majority Leader Steve Scalise said at a news conference Wednesday.
“They shouldn’t be able, as citizens of China, to vote in American elections, for God’s sake.”
Foreigners can only vote in local elections if they give up their right to vote in their country of origin.
Rep. Eleanor Holmes-Norton, D.C.’s non-voting delegate to Congress, sharply criticized the bill before the vote: ‘D.C. laws are matters for the duly elected D.C. Council and Mayor, not the unaccountable members of Congress who do not represent DC residents. DC’s nearly 700,000 residents are worthy and capable of governing their own local affairs.’
In recent days, Republicans have given more credence to the Great Replacement Theory: that Democrats welcome illegal immigrants to dilute the voting power of American citizens and help them in the census.
‘Democrats here in Washington want illegal aliens in our country. Because? “So they can become voters and they can affect the outcome of the census and security to affect congressional reapportionment,” Johnson said at a news conference Wednesday.
The bills come as Republicans make greater efforts to pass legislation that would impose restrictions on noncitizen voting at the federal level.
Federal law prohibits requiring documentary proof of citizenship in elections. Arizona requires it for state elections.
The SAVE Act, authored by Rep. Chip Roy and pushed by Johnson and former President Donald Trump, aims to force election officials to verify citizenship in elections. It is not yet clear when it will be put to a vote.
Johnson, speaking alongside Trump global heavyweights Stephen Miller and Hogan Gidley and Roy last week, did not give a full accounting of how many non-citizens have voted in the election, but warned the number could be “dangerously high.” “.
‘We all know, intuitively, that many illegals vote in federal elections. But it has not been something that is easily demonstrable. We don’t have that number. “This legislation will allow us to do exactly that.”
Noncitizens who vote in federal and state elections are already breaking the law and risking jail or deportation. A small handful of municipalities in California, Maryland and Vermont allow illegal immigrants to vote in local elections.
‘If a nefarious actor wants to intervene in our elections, all they have to do is check a box on a form and sign their name. That’s all. That’s all it takes,” Johnson said.
Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration policy, called the bill “the most important vote most members of Congress make in their entire careers.”
“If this bill does not become law, then Joe Biden and the Democrats will have engineered one of the largest interferences in any democratic nation in the history of the world.”
The bill would aim to close any loophole that allows people to register to vote without proof of U.S. citizenship or photo identification, require all 50 states to remove illegal immigrants from their voter rolls, and add penalties of up to five years in prison for electoral officials. that register non-citizens to vote and require proof of citizenship for those who vote abroad.
There is little evidence that noncitizen voting is impacting election results, and illegal immigrants often avoid giving out personal information for fear of being caught by immigration authorities.
However, it is possible to vote illegally as an undocumented immigrant.
Most ballots require some type of proof of identity to register to vote, such as a driver’s license. Not all such identification proofs require citizenship: the bill would specifically require identification requirements such as passports or birth certificates.
A sample of more than one billion ballots taken between 2002 and 2022 found fewer than 100 cases of voter fraud.
