Despite an overwhelming majority of House Democrats opposing the measure, the House on Tuesday moved to overturn a law in Washington, D.C., that allows non-citizens to vote in local elections.
The bill passed 266-148, according to Fox News. One Democrat voted “present,” while 56 supported the bill.
House Republicans have tried before to overturn the D.C. law, but both times the Democrat-dominated Senate blocked the measure from passing, according to The Washington Post. The Senate now has a Republican majority.
“The right to vote is a defining privilege of American citizenship,” Rep. James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, said. “Diluting that right by extending it to non-citizens — whether here legally or illegally — undermines the voice of D.C. residents.”
Democrats have once again shown their true colors.
148 Democrats just voted against a Republican bill to prohibit non citizens from voting in elections in Washington D.C. pic.twitter.com/m78H0TrCWE
— GOP (@GOP) June 10, 2025
Rep. August Pfluger, a Republican from Texas and the chair of the Republican Study Committee, said the law is a vestige of the left-leaning Biden administration that should be wiped away.
“D.C.’s City Council made radical decisions in our nation’s capital under the Biden-Harris administration, passing local laws that are woefully inconsistent with national standards or constitutional principles,” he said, according to NBC.
“I’m proud that the House is taking action to overturn several of these reckless measures — including my legislation to prohibit noncitizens from voting in local D.C. elections,” he said.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a Republican from Louisiana, said the GOP is being consistent in its commitment to secure elections.
“If D.C. wants illegals to vote, we’ve made it clear at the federal level people here illegally should not vote in any elections,” the Louisiana Republican said.
“We’re still the most generous nation in the world in terms of our legal immigration system,” he added, “but we have to fix our broken immigration system. And you could just see what’s going on in L.A. to prove the point.”
Democrats continue their misguided push to let non citizens to vote. Today we are exercising our constitutional obligation to STOP Washington DC’s non citizens voting law, just like we sued and stopped NYC’s law! Only American citizens can and should vote in elections! pic.twitter.com/xWN6iR1Sn6
— Office of Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (@RepNicole) June 10, 2025
Pfluger said the law allowing non-citizens the right to vote after living in the district for 30 days had to go, according to Fox News.
“I believe strongly in not having federal overreach, but we have jurisdiction, Congress has jurisdiction over Washington, District of Columbia… and we don’t like to utilize our jurisdiction and our authority, but in this case, they’ve gone too far,” he said.
Pfluger said he expected some Democrats would buck the party line, as was done in past votes on the issue.
“It’s hard to go back to your district as a Democrat and say, yeah, I want foreign agents to be able to vote in our elections – ‘Oh yeah, it’s not federal elections,’ some may say. But it has an impact on the way the city is run,” Pfluger said.
“This could be Russian embassy personnel, they could be Chinese embassy personnel – a number of folks. It’s just wrong. It goes against the fabric of our society,” he said.
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