Joe Morelle: “Mr. Speaker, I will comment that we have heard repeatedly that one person who is a non-U.S. citizen voting is too many.…”

“Mr. Speaker, I will comment that we have heard repeatedly that one person who is a non-U.S. citizen voting is too many. I agree. We have laws to prevent it. How many people is it okay to deny, U.S. citizens, who want to participate in the right to vote? To me, that would be the greater evil. We have 80 million Americans--voter-eligible U.S. citizens--who didn't vote in the last Presidential election. Isn't that astonishing? It is a big number, so it is hard to get your head around it. Eighty million Americans didn't participate. I am not saying that is anyone's fault, but I am saying this: Our committee and our House should be focused on how we increase voter participation. How do we make it so that more people feel as though they should engage? That is the only way we will get to the true promise of American democracy, when all 244 million Americans who are U.S. citizens participate in our elections. We should be doing everything we can to make it easy for those people. It is their God-given right, an inalienable right, as we often say.”