House Moves To Stop D.C. Bills on Non-Citizen Voting, Criminal Justice Reforms

The House of Representatives on Thursday passed a resolution spearheaded by Republicans aimed at overturning a Washington, D.C., city council bill that would permit non-citizen residents to vote in municipal elections.House Joint Resolution 24 passed the House with 260 votes; 42 Democrats joined the Republicans in opposing the measure. It will now face the Democratic-controlled Senate and, if passed, land on President Biden’s desk.Speaker McCarthy, speaking in favor of the resolution on the House Floor, said the council bill would “dilute the vote of American citizens and endanger city residents and businesses.”The district’s non-voting representative, Eleanor Holmes Nortion, a Democrat, spoke in favor of the bill, and publicly questioned whether Congress should even have the power to directly review the actions of D.C. city lawmakers.“I can only conclude that the Republican leadership believes D.C. residents, the majority of whom are Black and Brown, are unworthy or uncapable of governing themselves,” Ms. Holmes Norton said.Representative Alexandria Occasio-Cortez, who also spoke in favor of the bill, said Republicans were trying to “meddle into the business of D.C. residents.”She added that Republicans “claim they believe in the sacred right to vote while denying that right to vote to an overwhelmingly Black city.”The legislative process in Washington empowers Congress to have final review of laws that are passed by the city council and overturn decisions as they see fit. Actions by Congress, however, must pass both chambers and be signed by the president to take effect.The process for overturning a law in the district, however, is rarely successful; it has been decades since Congress successfully did so, though it has issued disapproval resolutions as recently as 2015.In the same session, the House also passed a resolution of disapproval of a D.C. law that would overhaul the city’s criminal code. Forty-two Democrats joined Republicans in opposing the criminal code changes.Of the two laws, the criminal code overhaul is more likely to see opposition among Senate Democrats. This is in part because the D.C. mayor, Muriel Bowser, vetoed the bill, but that veto was overruled by the council.The chairman of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer, said, “There may not be much Mayor Bowser and I have agreed upon in the past, but today we are on the same page.”“Ignoring the high rates of criminality in the District and doubling down on leniency for society’s violent criminals is a dereliction of duty,” Mr. Comer said Monday. “If the D.C. council wants to continue to skirt its responsibility to the people, they will have to answer to this Congress.”The vote comes as non-citizen voting in municipal elections grows as an issue across America. Multiple cities have voted to allow non-citizen residents to vote in the past year, including New York City, though the law there was later thrown out by the state court of appeals.San Francisco, 11 municipalities in Maryland, and two cities in Vermont have passed measures allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections.

House Moves To Stop D.C. Bills on Non-Citizen Voting, Criminal Justice Reforms

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