Wednesday, September 18, 2024

Non-Citizen Voters and Excluded Citizen Voters

"[Speaker of the House] Johnson said it is a serious problem because even if a tiny percentage of noncitizens do vote, it could determine the outcome of an extremely close race. He noted that Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa won her seat back in 2020 by six votes."

Why doesn't Johnson link this concern with the possibility that a perhaps tiny percentage of citizens might be prohibited from voting because they cannot find their birth certificate? Inasmuch investigation has never turned up 6 non-citizen voters in any congressional district, isn't it more likely that those close elections will be decided by the excluded citizens rather than the voting non-citizens?

One might think that all and only citizens should be able to vote. Why isn't Johnson as concerned about the "all" as much as he is the "only"?

It seems, by the by, not wholly unlikely that Representative Miller-Meeks owed her election to the excclusion of senior citizens whose driver's license or passports had gone over Iowa's 90 grace period on expired documents. 

Johnson wants to make proof of citizenship conditions more rigorous without even a nod towards the possibility that exlcusion of citizens from voting might count as some kind of problem and might, in fact, be more likely to affect the outcome of close elections than the voting of non-citizens, which is extraordinarily rare.

No comments:

Post a Comment