<p class="p1"><span class="s1">House lawmakers Friday voted 228-197 against a proposal to condemn voting by illegal immigrants. </span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">The vote fell largely along party lines, with only one Republican joining Democrats in rejecting a proposal to add the following language to a Democrat-backed election proposal (HR1):</span></p>
<p class="p1"><em><span class="s1">“Allowing legal immigrants the right to vote devalues the franchise and diminishes the voting power of United States citizens.”</span></em></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">The wording is a direct response to San Francisco’s decision to allow illegal immigrants to vote in school board elections. </span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">“Today, I offered a motion to recommit #HR1 reaffirming that only US citizens should have the right to vote,” tweeted Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R). “Dems rejected it. Next time you go to the ballot box, keep that in mind. The future of their party is in cities like San Fran, where illegals can vote. Let that sink in.”</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">As Crenshaw pointed out, 41 Democrats who rejected the proposal on Friday supported a nearly identical proposal in September. Those Democrats will now have to explain to voters why they changed their minds on such an important matter. </span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">“We’ve watched Democrats prioritize illegal immigrants over American citizens for a while now,” tweeted Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA). “But today they took it a step further by blocking our motion to prevent illegal immigrants from voting in elections &#8211; effectively devaluing the vote of legitimate voters.”</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">HR1 was approved later on Friday without the clause on illegal voting. As it stands, the proposal defends localities (like San Francisco) which allow illegal immigrants to vote in local elections. Non-citizens are still banned from</span><span class="s1"> voting in federal elections according to US law.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><strong><span class="s1">If signed into the law, HR1 would:</span></strong></p>
<ul>
<li><span class="s2">Establish Election Day as a holiday</span></li>
<li><span class="s2">Require all presidential candidates to disclose their tax returns</span></li>
<li><span class="s2">Institute public financing of congressional campaigns </span></li>
<li><span class="s2">Require all organizations that spend money on elections to disclose donors </span></li>
</ul>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">In a letter to lawmakers, the ACLU </span><span style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;">insisted the proposal would threaten free speech. </span><span class="s1">“They will have the effect of harming our public discourse by silencing necessary voices that would otherwise speak out about the public issues of the day.”</span></p>
<p><strong>Author&#8217;s Note:</strong> Democrats want illegals to come to America and vote in elections because non-citizens will always support Democrat candidates. And while illegal immigrants&#8217; participation in school board elections might be benign, the principle could have disastrous effects if adopted at higher levels; for example, Mexico could flood a state with illegal immigrants and take over with alien votes. We must not allow this to happen.</p>