On Schumer’s Order, Senate Enables Foreign Interference in D.C. Elections

Foreign nationals can vote in America’s capital city now that the U.S. Senate has stood down. But the ballot battle is far from over.

Washington D.C.’s disingenuously titled “Local Resident Voting Rights Act” opens polling places to non-citizens, including employees of foreign governments such as Russia and China. Passed by the City Council without the signature of Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, the law covers residents regardless of whether they have legal permission to be in this country.

In a bipartisan vote, 260-162, the House last month disapproved the D.C. law that radically expanded the definition of “qualified electors” in local elections. But Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., let the law stand by refusing to put the issue to a vote this week.

“Allowing enemies of our nation to vote in the nation’s capital makes us a laughingstock,” Ken Cuccinelli, chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative and former acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), said Monday.

The next day, the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) sued to strike down D.C.’s voting scheme. “This law — and others like it that are popping up around the country — is a direct attack on American self-government,” said Christopher Hajec, director of litigation for FAIR’s legal arm. (See lawsuit here.)

Going beyond New York City’s alien-voting law, which a Staten Island judge struck down last year, D.C. will not require a green card to vote, simply 30 days of residency before an election, says Christopher Arps, of Americans for Citizen Voting.

Even the liberal Washington Post opposed the council’s action. “New citizens must swear an oath renouncing all allegiances to foreign powers and promising to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies. There’s nothing in this measure to prevent employees at embassies of governments openly hostile to the United States from casting ballots,” the Post editorialized.

The Senate could have revoked D.C.’s open invitation to foreign interference in its municipal elections. Wielding their constitutional authority over the district earlier this month, senators voted 81-14 to block a controversial city crime bill that would have lowered penalties on violent offenders.

The crime measure was doomed when President Joe Biden announced that he opposed it. But the White House remained mum when it came to extending voting privileges to foreign nationals. So Schumer, who has never seen a mass immigration or amnesty bill he didn’t like, did his partisan duty by doing nothing.

FAIR has stated, “The right to vote is at the very core of the principle of self-determination and what it means to be a citizen.” The Senate leader cheapened that right by not even allowing his colleagues their opportunity to vote.