Joe Morelle: “To just note something that has been talked about for some time which is going back to an election that happened nearly…”

“To just note something that has been talked about for some time which is going back to an election that happened nearly 30 years ago in California. It talks about Representative Loretta Sanchez in her 1996 election in California. My Republican colleagues continue to make allegations that there were roughly 600 noncitizens who voted in the race. It is patently false. The reality is the exact opposite. Many of the supposed noncitizens identified in the contest had, in fact, already become U.S. citizens through naturalization by the time they cast their ballots in 1996, and some had been U.S. citizens for decades. Other U.S. citizens were erroneously identified as noncitizens because their names were like noncitizens' names that were in an INS database. It is no accident. Even then, the Republicans were in charge of the Committee on House Administration. They investigated it, and they concluded that the committee's investigation had no irregularities. They dismissed the contested election. They concluded that the outcome of the election was not in doubt. The fact that they would, 30 years later, bring up a contest that was decided admittedly by a few votes, where claims of widespread noncitizens voting has been thoroughly debunked says more about their lack of evidence than it does anything else. It simply does not happen, and there is no evidence that that is the case.…”