During recent debate in the House over whether that chamber would vote against allowing D.C. to maintain a plan to permit limited instances of voting by people who aren’t citizens in local matters, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) adeptly outlined some of the history of the debate and what the matter boils down to.
Raskin is separately among the over 180 Democrats in the House who have attached their names to a legislative initiative in support of admitting Washington, D.C., as a state. The Biden administration has also expressed support for that idea.
The district has sometimes found itself lumped in with locales run by Democratic leaders that Republicans like to target and characterize in extreme, over-the-top terms. It’s been said that another proposal in D.C. to change some of the standards for maximum sentences connected to certain criminal offenses would make the district a safe haven for criminals, which is ridiculous. Criminals will still be prosecuted, just like any people who aren’t citizens will still be dealt with under the relevant portions of the law in so-called sanctuary jurisdictions, where local law enforcement refuse forms of cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. The idea that those areas are also somehow providing shelter for crime is just nonsense.
Raskin explained how there is actually a history of allowing people who aren’t citizens to vote in U.S. elections, and as he laid it out, such was actually a matter of contention around the time of the Civil War. Obviously, the general consensus in U.S. law eventually leaned towards mandating only citizens could vote while allowing people to become citizens — sometimes more easily than at other points, but that point of agreement was reached after a series of local determinations.
“When we’re talking about local non-citizen voting, who’s going to vote in your school board or town council elections, that should be decided locally,” Raskin said. “My colleagues who were the ones determined not to make the District of Columbia a state should be the first ones to say, if it’s just a local government, let them decide who’s going to vote on matters of garbage collection and who [their] teachers are gonna be. The jurisdictions that have done this, like Los Angeles, have wanted to make sure that parents in local public schools get the right to vote regardless of their citizenship status. Most of the non-citizens, of course, are lawful residents… In any event, if my friends really support home rule and local self-determination, they will allow the people of Washington, D.C., to decide that.” Watch Raskin below:
