In another clear case of promoting fair elections, House Republicans saw to the success of a resolution to overturn a D.C. bill that would give immigrants voting power in municipal elections. The Thursday vote saw the resolution pass by 260-162, with 42 House Democrats siding with the Republican-led measure.
BREAKING: The U.S. House passes Republican-led resolutions to overturn two Washington, D.C. city council bills. The bills allow noncitizens to vote in local elections and revise the city's criminal code for the first time since the early 1900s.https://t.co/n2OgQ2CHw3
— Democracy Docket (@DemocracyDocket) February 9, 2023
D.C. Bill 24.300 seeks to lower the qualifications for voting in D.C.’s local elections. From 2024, the bill passed by the D.C. Council last year will step over the previous requirements of U.S. citizenship or legal immigration status and let people who have resided in the District for as little as a month vote on municipal issues. This includes illegal residents.
Under the new law, voting power would also be given to foreign nationals with allegiance to their native country, such as Chinese diplomats, as long as they have lived in the District for up to a month. However, the law may never be enacted thanks to the D.C. Home Rule Act that allows congress to block laws.
The next stop is the Senate. However, the measure has very little chance of success there, and with President Biden’s unspoken stance as to whether he will veto the law, it might have to end as another proof of Republicans’ fight for election integrity amid incessant assault on the concept of free and fair elections by Democrats.
Not only would the law further sabotage the integrity of elections in D.C. – implementing it would come at huge unaffordable costs to the city.
The House also approved a resolution that disapproves of a criminal code bill that reduced penalties for violent crimes and slashed maximum penalties for violent crimes. The resolution of the criminal code approved by the council in November was led by Rep. James Comer (R-KY).
“Today the House took the first step to prevent two of the D.C. Council’s irresponsible and dangerous laws from going into effect. These misguided efforts would allow crime to run rampant and disenfranchise American citizens in our nation’s capital,” he said in reaction to the passage of the measures.
Executive director of Honest Elections Project Action Jason Snead also applauded the vote to cancel the non-citizen voting bill saying, “I applaud the House for acting to ensure that foreign spies and illegal immigrants are not voting in the nation’s capital.”
“Thanks to a Constitutional right and since the District is not a state, the House acted as it should have and has moved to stop this extreme and antidemocratic measure,” he added.
