While the 58th anniversary of the Selma, Alabama, Bloody Sunday seemed an apt occasion to address the right of all citizens to participate democratically in their government, leaving the job to President Joe Biden was … awkward. He said nothing of consequence.
But back in 2020, candidate Biden said this: “In order to be able to vote, it’s important that you be a U.S. citizen.” That’s consequential.
In 2021, however, when the New York City Council extended suffrage to foreign nationals living legally in the Big Apple, against the will of the majority of New Yorkers, I don’t recall hearing even the slightest peep from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Now the wackos in Washington, D.C., have enacted a non-citizen voting measure that goes further. It allows Russian nationals working for Mr. Putin at their embassy in our nation’s capital to vote on city candidates and ballot issues and welcomes onto Washington’s voter rolls Chinese citizens here promoting Xi Jinping and the interests of his genocidal regime.
The District of Columbia’s ordinance extends the franchise even to people here illegally, allowing anyone from anywhere in the world able to avoid deportation to cast a ballot. Legally.
Thankfully, House Joint Resolution 24, which seeks to block the D.C. non-citizen voting ordinance passed the U.S. House last month, garnering support from every Republican present as well as roughly one in five Democrats. Action now moves to the Senate.
“After years of lamenting so-called ‘foreign interference’ in our elections,” argues Sen. Tom Cotton (R‑Ark.), “every single Democrat ought to join in invalidating this insane policy.”
But will they?
Congressional Democrats might claim that their support for local control in D.C. excuses them for allowing this non-citizen voting measure to become law. But it’s not even a fig-leaf after Biden declared he would sign the congressional Republicans’ repeal of another D.C. council enactment, a controversial crime “reform” law, which District officials then hurriedly withdrew to placate nervous national Dems.
Talk about awkward!
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Note: Biden certainly has a cavernous credibility gap on election integrity. After he attacked Republicans as “un-American” and the 2021 election reform legislation enacted in Georgia as “Jim Crow in the 21st Century,” the Peach State saw “record breaking turnout” in last year’s election. Sadly, much of the media merely ignored reality; CBS News headlined one report, “Effect of Georgia’s voting law unclear, despite high turnout.”
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9 replies on “Alien National Capital”
An up-side of this nonsense from the City Council of Washington is that it alienates even more people from the mad proposal to grant the District the status of a constituent state.
Excellent point and one I thought I would make in this piece when I first started writing it. But there was simply too much Washington insanity to discuss it all. And there are so many other good reasons NOT to make DC the 51st state that I knew I couldn’t fit into this commentary.
Thanks for your assistance.
It’s not clear if DC can ever become a state without amending the Constitution to allow it. After all, Congress had to amend the Constitution to allow DC citizens to cast a vote for president.
Pat, an odd effect of that Amendment might be to lock the District out of statehood without a further Amendment, but an Amendment was necessary to assign Electors to an entity that were not a constituent state.
Various other legal obstacles stand in the way of statehood for the District, but the acquiesences of Maryland and of Virginia, and a majority in each Chamber of Congress might be sufficient for the District to be made a state.
Daniel,
I think an amendment would be required because Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17 gives Congress exclusive authority over the district that becomes the seat of the federal government. Article 4, part of which covers the creation of new states from existing states, would not apply to DC. Congress and thirty eight states would need to acquiesce in order to eliminate Article 1 powers over the district.
Pat, the Supreme Court might make exactly that interpretation, or might hold that Congress could relocate the jurisdiction of the District at will, in which case most of the present District could become the jurisdiction of a new constituent state.
I will quite greet that such an interpretation would be strained, but the Supreme Court has often made strained interpretations.
Any part of DC not content with their relationship with the federal government should revert back to being part of Maryland or Virginia.
Do you live in New York City or Washington, DC?
If not, why would it be any of your business how the people who DO live there go about choosing their politicians?
And according to the US Constitution (Article I, Section 9; Article V; Amendment 10), no one is here “illegally.”
The people in New York City and in the city of Washington weren’t allowed to decide the scope of the franchise. Popular opinion was not consulted in Washington; in New York City, the decision was made in defiance of known popular opinion. Would you insist that the people of China have chosen their politicians, and we should simply be quiet? We get to offer opinions — as you surely have — on who should be allowed to decide what.
The city of Washington represents the additional problem that it exists as our Federal capital — indeed, it was brought into existence for that purposed — and its operations impinge upon the functioning of the Federal government and thus upon us all.