Political Pistachio: Here We Go: D.C. To Allow Illegal Aliens To Vote

While many critics skewer President Obama’s recent amnesty-granting executive action, D.C.’s municipal lawmakers have their own plans for the next battle on the immigration-citizenship front. Invoking considerations of fairness and justice against “anti-immigrant hysteria,” D.C. council member David Grosso (I-At-Large) and several fellow councilmembers on Tuesday introduced the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2015, a bill to grant non-American citizens residing in the D.C.-area the ability to vote in municipal elections.

In keeping with similar initiatives in 2013 and 2004, the bill would give suffrage to non-citizen D.C. residents who “have permanent residency status.” Grosso cited U.S. Census Bureau figures from 2012 approximating that over 90 percent of the 53,975 foreign-born, non-naturalized U.S. citizens in the District are 18 years of age or older, to weight down with seriousness his pronouncement that “these are taxpayers who should have the opportunity to have their voices heard in local elections.”

If the bill passes, it would not make D.C. the first to have allowed non-citizens to vote in local elections. Currently, half a dozen towns or jurisdictions in Maryland, including Takoma Park, allow the practice, while Chicago allows all (presumably legal) residents to vote in school board elections. In much the same vein, non-citizens in California now have the right to act as poll monitors, to practice law (even if an illegal alien), and also to serve on juries.

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