After a year and a half of battling, the US House of Representatives Oversight Committee voted 8 to 1 last month to dismiss an investigation into the 1000 vote victory of California Democrat Loretta Sanchez over Republican Robert K. Dornan. Dornan had previously held the seat for eighteen years. The fight was significant to immigration watchers because the main basis for the challenge was an accusation that Sanchez received a number of votes from non-citizens.

Rep. Vernon Ehlers, the Michigan Republican heading the task force investigating the election stated that "There is not enough evidence of a sufficient number of illegal votes to justify vacating the election." Only between 350 and 748 votes could be determined to be suspect, less than Sanchez' victory margin.

And as the fight over Sanchez' seat has ended, a bill to make citizenship verification of voters tougher, backed by many of the people pushing for Sanchez' ouster, also has met a similar fate. By a 210 to 200 vote, the bill, H.R. 1428, was defeated on the House floor on February 12th. The bill would have permitted local election officials to submit the names of both registered voters and those applying for registration to the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Social Security Administration in order to verify citizenship. If the agencies did not confirm citizenship, states could refuse to add a voter or drop a voter off the registration rolls.

Shortly before the vote, a coalition of civil rights and voter rights groups held a press conference to say that the bill would have violated the rights of millions of Americans, opening the door to new discrimination against various racial and ethnic groups.