Bucking Anti-Immigrant Trend, Some Communities Push for Non-Citizen Voting

[pampango]

http://washingtonindependent.com/101358/bucking-anti-immigrant-trend-some-communities-push-for-non-citizen-voting

In a city (Portland, Maine) where legal immigrants make up about 15 percent of the population, the progressive groups Maine People’s Alliance and the League of Young Voters are working to encourage voters to extend voting rights to legal immigrants who have not yet become citizens. They argue these residents live, work and pay taxes in the city, but due to the difficulty of obtaining citizenship are unfairly denied the right to determine how the city spends its funds.

“Legal immigrants are active members of the community and shouldn’t be denied a voice because of these major barriers,” said Reva Eiferman, an organizer with Maine People’s Alliance. “There’s a disconnect between the citizenship process within the immigration system and an individual’s right to have their voice heard in their city.”

As cities and states across the country consider legislation aimed at limiting the flow of outsiders to their areas, a few municipalities are moving in the opposite direction, pushing to expand the rights of immigrants living within their borders. In Portland, Question 4 would allow legal immigrants to vote in municipal elections. A ballot proposition in San Francisco aims to take voting one step further, allowing even illegal immigrants to vote in school elections as long as they are the parents of a public school student. In New York, city council members plan to introduce legislation allowing legal residents to vote in city elections within the next few months.

Non-citizens can already vote in six Maryland municipalities and in Chicago school elections, but the rest of the country gives voting privileges only to citizens. Early in the country’s history, non-citizens were allowed to vote in most states, but as immigration into the United States increased, residents began to restrict voting rights, state by state. (Federal elections have always limited voting to citizens.) By the 1920s, as Europeans moved to the country after World War I, states cut off legal immigrant voting rights entirely, and only a few cities have so far reinstated them.

[Igel]

1. I'm curious as to how it works in the municipalities where non-citizens can vote.

Every place I've lived voting is a binary right: you can or can't, no shades of gray. You get a voter ID number and that grants you access to the ballot. There is only one ballot.

Since for national elections you need to declare yourself to be a citizen, eligible to vote, without perjuring yourself, the binary-voting-right approach means you also need to be a citizen to vote for dog catcher.

If we separate out dog catcher and local elections from national elections, it means either non-citizens are voting for national offices or there's a two-tiered, separate-and-not-equal voting system. Somehow my citizenh's voter ID lets me get access to the ballot requiring citizenship and to the ballot not requiring citizen, while Muhammed Ashokovich Lopez y Bao gets just the non-citizen ballots. Harder with unified ballots and polling stations, I'd think.

[Posteritatis]

2. Municipal and local governments can be more ad-hoc than state/federal

Any offices set up in the state or federal constitutions should be citizen-elected solely, of course. As long as more local offices don't interfere with the constitutional franchise, however, the idea of some town letting permanent residents or the like vote for their municipal council or mayor or whatnot doesn't bother me that much.