Democrats in the House have voted to defend illegal alien voting in local elections, a practice becoming more commonplace in sanctuary cities as Dems look to normalize illegal immigration.
Democrats beat back a Republican effort to prevent illegals from voting in any U.S. election.
It’s a slippery slope that cheapens citizenship and brings us closer to the day when all residents — legal and illegal — will be able to vote.
“We are prepared to open up the political process and let all of the people come in,” Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and hero of the civil rights movement, told colleagues as he led opposition to the GOP measure.
The 228-197 vote came as part of a broader debate on Democrats’ major legislative priority this year, HR 1, the “For the People Act,” which includes historic expansions of voter registration and access, as well as a major rewrite of campaign finance laws.
The measure would have had no practical effect even if it had passed. Illegal immigrants — and indeed noncitizens as a whole — are not legally able to participate in federal elections.
The practice of allowing illegals to vote in local elections is spreading rapidly, especially in sanctuary cities.
But Republicans had hoped to send a message to localities such as San Francisco, where noncitizens are now allowed to vote in school board elections.
“It sounds like I’m making it up. What kind of government would cancel the vote of its own citizens, and replace it with noncitizens?” said Rep. Dan Crenshaw, Texas Republican.
He pointed to last year’s vote, when 49 Democrats joined the GOP to decry noncitizen voting.
On Friday just six Democrats voted in favor.
A 1996 federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections, but there is no prohibition on localities, and indeed a number of jurisdictions allow it, to some extent.
Famously liberal Takoma Park, a small jurisdiction in Maryland, has for several decades allowed noncitizens, including illegal immigrants, to vote in local elections.
Experts say as many as 40 states or territories allowed noncitizen voting dating back to the nation’s founding.
Elections — no matter if they’re local, state, or federal — should limit participation to stakeholding citizens. Illegals may be living here, but that hardly makes them stakeholders. It makes them fugitives from the law.
If illegals want to be stakeholders, why don’t they get themselves legal and become citizens? And if they don’t want to become citizens, what are they doing voting anyway?
I can see allowing legal, non-citizen residents to vote in local elections. They have a legitimate stake in the outcome of a mayor’s race or school board contest. They live and work in the community in the open, not slinking in the shadows hoping no one discovers their immigration status.
Making it easier for citizens to register and vote legally is a good thing. Giving illegal aliens a say in local government is not.
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