A top Democrat congressman’s long-help support for non-citizen voting has been revealed as the House prepares to vote on the issue.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) the House Oversight Committee’s ranking member and a former Trump “impeachment manager,” previously advocated for non-citizen participation in the U.S. election system.
Raskin argues that the framers of the U.S. Constitution did not “intend” for a citizenship requirement to vote..
It comes as the House gears up to vote on a bill that would repeal a Washington D.C. law to grant non-citizen residents of the city the right to vote in local elections.
The bill advanced through the House Oversight Committee in a 23-19 vote last summer.
It is expected for a House floor vote on Thursday afternoon.
Raskin is among several Democrats who opposed the bill.
In 1993, Raskin authored a paper for the American University Washington College of Law titled: “Legal Aliens, Local Citizens: The Historical Constitutional and Theoretical Meanings of Alien Suffrage.”
“In this Article, I will argue that the current blanket exclusion of non-citizens from the ballot is neither constitutionally required nor historically normal,” Raskin wrote.
“Moreover, the disenfranchisement of aliens at the local level is vulnerable to deep theoretical objections since