House Passes Resolution to Overturn Bill that Would Allow Illegal Aliens to Vote in D.C.
FAIR Take | February 2023
On Thursday, by a bipartisan vote of 260-162, the House of Representatives passed H.J. Res. 24, a joint resolution from Rep. James Comer (R-KY) disapproving of the District of Columbia Council passing the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act (D.C. Act 24-6400). Enacted in November 2022, the D.C. bill would allow foreign nationals, including illegal aliens, to vote in local elections. Forty-two House Democrats joined all of their Republican colleagues voting in favor of the resolution.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who called the proposal “insane” last year, has introduced the Senate companion to the resolution.
The D.C. bill passed the City Council by a vote of 12-1 on October 18, 2022 and allows aliens who have been “residents” in D.C. for 30 days to vote in local elections.
In simple terms, allowing the Local Residents Voting Rights Amendment Act to stand would weaken American sovereignty and dilute the voting power of American citizens by granting voting rights to the estimated 50,000 non-citizens residing in D.C., including up to 20,000 illegal aliens.
Implementing the D.C. act would open voting in our nation’s capital to foreign influence in the middle of an unprecedented crisis at our southern border, very likely violating the Equal Protection clause along the way. By removing the guardrails on who is able to vote in our elections – a proposal so extreme that even the Washington Post Editorial Board and D.C. Mayor Muriel Boswer were unable to support it – illegal aliens and employees at embassies of governments that are openly hostile to the United States would be allowed to influence our elections.
As the Post Editorial Board wrote, the alien voting bill is “a bad idea,” “unwise” and “radical,” further noting that “[v]oting is a foundational right of citizenship.”
And even though the White House, predictably, put out a Statement of Administration Policy opposing the resolution, that statement was perhaps most notable for what it did not include: a threat to veto the resolution if passed. It seems even the radical, open-borders activists of the Biden administration recognize that openly supporting this bill is a bridge too far.
H.J. Res. 24 is a commonsense step to preserve the rights of D.C. voters against radical activist policies and stop the citizens of rival nations from voting in our elections.
While it is encouraging that 42 Democrats supported the resolution, apparently the 162 Democrats who voted against the resolution believe that illegal aliens and hostile foreign nationals should be given the same voting privileges as law-abiding Americans.