NW Valley Times

U.S. Congressional candidate Blake Masters (R-AZ-8) said Arizona Democrats "want to dilute" the power of citizen's votes "by counting illegal aliens" after U.S. Reps. from Arizona voted to count illegal aliens towards seats in Congress. 

“The Democrats literally want to dilute your vote by counting illegal aliens!" Masters said. "That’s unconstitutional and un-American. When elected, I’ll work with President Trump to ensure that only U.S. citizens can vote and determine our representation in Congress.”

U.S. Reps. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and Greg Stanton (D-AZ) were joined by 200 other House Democrats in unanimously voting against the Equal Representation Act, which would prevent the inclusion of illegal aliens in the count for seats in the Electoral College, reported the Grand Canyon Times. 

The Act, HR 7109, would “require a citizenship question on the decennial census” and “modify apportionment of Representatives to be based on United States citizens instead of all persons.” 

To do so, the bill proposes amending the House Code 2 U.S.C. 2a(a) to add “individuals who are not citizens of the United States” to the direction that “the President shall transmit to the Congress a statement showing the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed, as ascertained under the seventeenth and each subsequent decennial census of the population,” in order to determine the appropriate number of Representatives from each state. 

“This administration will admit that 9.2 million illegal aliens have come in under their control,” U.S. Rep. Biggs (R-AZ) said on the floor. “They will also admit there’s another 1.8 million known got-aways. That’s 11 million people that they admit to that have come in in three and a half years. And it has distorted the population and skewed the one person, one vote standard which is the canon upon which the case was founded. “

202 House Democrats voted against the bill, which passed with 206 unanimous “Yea” votes from House Republicans. Eleven Democrats and eleven Republicans did not vote. 

U.S. Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ) abstained from voting, while Reps. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ), Elijah Crane (R-AZ), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Debbie Lesko (R-AZ), and David Schweikert (R-AZ) voted in favor of the legislation. 

"Our democracy depends on accurate representation and electoral integrity,” Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC), who proposed the legislation, said on the House floor. “Voting is a coveted privilege held by American citizens, and elected representatives are responsible for serving the interests of the voters in their district.”

"But even if not a single illegal alien casts a vote, the mere presence of illegal immigrants in the U.S. is having a profound impact on the outcome of elections, skewing the representation of Americans,” Edwards said.  

The bill now goes to the Senate.