DC Board of Elections defends noncitizen voting

Law360 reports:

The District of Columbia’s elections board urged a federal judge to toss a lawsuit accusing it of unconstitutionally diluting the district’s voting pool by expanding voting eligibility to certain noncitizens, saying noncitizen voting has long been accepted as constitutional.

The D.C. Board of Elections said that as a threshold matter, two former Republican candidates for local office and a group of registered district voters couldn’t sue the board as their complaint failed to include any allegation showing that they intended to participate in elections.

But even on the merits of the plaintiffs’ lawsuit, the board said that the “long, accepted practice” of giving noncitizens the right to vote should foreclose any of their claims that the practice is unconstitutional.

“Local, state and federal governments have enfranchised noncitizens since the Founding and throughout American history,” the board said in a Wednesday motion to dismiss. “All the while, courts — including the Supreme Court — have either endorsed noncitizen voting or at least never questioned its constitutionality.”

Initially lodged in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in March before being removed to the D.C. federal court in May, the lawsuit — whose plaintiffs include 2022 Republican mayoral candidate Stacia Hall — alleged that the district’s newly enacted Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2022 violated the equal protection and due process clauses of the Fifth Amendment.

They said by enfranchising noncitizens in D.C. elections, the act “dilutes the votes of native-born U.S. citizens living in D.C.” and thus unlawfully discriminates against them based on their national origin.

The plaintiffs, who also include 2018 Republican D.C. Council candidate Ralph Chittams, further argued that the law — which they referred to in their complaint as the “D.C. Noncitizen Voting Act — violated their constitutional “right to citizen self-government.”

The law was passed in October after a unanimous D.C. Council vote. Mayor Muriel Bowser signed it in November.

The case is Hall et al. v. D.C. Board of Elections, case number 1:23-cv-01261, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

MHC