Wisconsin lawmaker's claim on immigrants voting in local Washington, D.C., elections is Mostly True

One of the perks of being a citizen is voting in local elections, but recent election cycles have put regulations under scrutiny.

One such regulation has caught the ire of Republican Rep. Bryan Steil, who represents Wisconsin’s first district. 

On Sept. 28 Steil was speaking at an event for The Ripon Society on elections and his proposal, the  American Confidence in Elections Act, which could change the guidance the federal government gives states on elections. 

It would also change who can vote in Washington, D.C., in local elections. 

At The Ripon Society event Steil said:

"Washington D.C., allows noncitizens to vote in the upcoming 2024 election under current law. That’s municipal elections. Think of the mayor of Washington D.C. That means, just to give you an example of how crazy I believe this law is, an individual who’s a Russian national, a Russian citizen, working at the Russian Embassy, after residing in Washington D.C., for 30 days, can walk out of the Russian Embassy, have their Russian passport in their pocket, walk down to a voting location next year and vote for mayor in Washington D.C. And they don’t even need to show their ID to do it." 

We decided to take a closer look, with a focus on the core of the claim – can noncitizens vote in the municipal election, and do so without showing an ID? 

Is he right?

In 1955, Washington, D.C., passed regulations on who can vote in local elections and for what races. The law has been amended a few times over the years, but has maintained central requirements for local elections: a person must be a resident of the city for at least 30 days, be 18 years old by the time of the election, and be a U.S. citizen.

Pretty standard stuff. 

In 2022, the regulation was amended to remove the citizen requirement starting in 2024 for municipal elections. For federal elections a person voting in the district will still need to be a citizen. 

The amendment caused an uproar in the U.S. House of Representatives which passed a disapproval resolution 260-162, including 42 Democratic votes, which is required to change Washington, D.C., ordinances according to the District of Columbia Home Rule Act. The resolution is in the Senate to be voted on and if passed, needs to be signed by the president to undo the law. 

Could someone working in the Russian embassy vote for mayor in Washington, D.C.? We queried the District of Columbia Board of Elections with Steil’s hypothetical.

Sarah Graham, communications director for the District of Columbia Board of Elections, confirmed that the city does allow noncitizen voting starting in 2024 and there is no photo ID requirement. 

So Steil is basically on point, but his statement misses some information.

Graham said via email that to vote in Washington, D.C., a person must be registered to vote; be 18 years old on or before the next general election; have maintained a residence in the District of Columbia for at least 30 days preceding the next election and not claim voting residence or the right to vote in any state, territory, or country; and not have been found to be by a court of law to be legally incompetent to vote.

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Derrick Van Orden

stated on April 1, 2024 in X, formerly Twitter

You can vote in-person absentee at your clerk’s office on Monday before Election Day.

That part, not being able to vote in another country, was ignored by Steil in his claim.

Under these rules, the Russian embassy worker can’t vote in Russia and fly back to the United States and vote for mayor of the District of Columbia.

Also, the rule applies to people working at the Canadian embassy, the English and Irish embassies, the other embassies and other immigrants in the city. Steil singles out Russia, apparently for maximum rhetorical effect.

Allowing noncitizens to vote is not as unusual as Steil makes it out to be: Multiple municipalities including New York City and San Francisco allow immigrants to vote in local races. 

In Takoma Park, Maryland, not too far from Washington, D.C., immigrants have been allowed to vote in local races for 30 years. 

In October, Takoma Park celebrated 30 years of noncitizen voting and released the most recent data on the city’s website. In 2017, of the 347 registered noncitizen voters in Takoma Park, 72 cast ballots, making up roughly 20% of those registered. Overall turnout in 2017 was 22%. 

Ron Hayduk, a San Francisco State University political science professor who specializes in immigration and political participation, acknowledges it might seem strange for a municipality to allow noncitizens to vote in local elections, but it’s not unusual or unprecedented in the United States.

Even when Wisconsin was founded in 1848, citizenship wasn’t required to vote.

"Wisconsin was one of the states that actually made immigrant voting a really popular practice in American history," Hayduk said. "Wisconsin allowed immigrants to vote before citizenship, not just in local elections, but also state and federal elections from 1848 until 1908. A big chunk of Wisconsin history where Germans, Irish, Swedish, Finnish, European immigrants, like many of the people in Wisconsin ... maybe their grandparents or great-grandparents actually voted before citizenship in Wisconsin."  

According to the Wisconsin Historical Society, the original Wisconsin constitution determined noncitizens could vote. It stated:

"Persons not citizens of the United States who at the time of the adoption of this constitution were actually residents of the state and had declared their intention to become citizens of the United States and who shall have resided in the state (for) six months."

Part of the idea behind allowing immigrants the right to vote in local elections is allowing them to have their say in how local taxes, which they pay,  are used. 

According to the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit immigrant advocacy group, in 2021 immigrant-led households in Washington, D.C., paid $603.1 million in state and local taxes. 

That year there were more than 90,000 immigrants in the city, the group says. The largest countries represented of that group include El Salvador with 9.7% of the immigrant population and Ethiopia with 6.5%.

Steil claimed "Washington, D.C., allows noncitizens to vote in (municipal elections)" so a Russian citizen, after living in Washington for 30 days can "vote for mayor in Washington, D.C. And they don’t even need to show their ID to do it." 

It is true that noncitizens can vote in local Washington, D.C., elections starting in 2024 and they don’t need a photo ID. But Steil fails to mention that they cannot do so if they are registered to vote in their home country and frames it as an unusual occurrence, when there are many other examples across the country. 

Our definition for Mostly True is "the statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information." That fits here.