The GOP stoked fears of noncitizens voting. Cases in Ohio show how rhetoric and reality diverge

2024/12/17 Leave a comment

No surprise:

Before the November presidential election, Ohio’s secretary of state and attorney general announced investigations into potential voter fraud that included people suspected of casting ballots even though they were not U.S. citizens.

It coincided with a national Republican messaging strategy warning that potentially thousands of ineligible voters would be voting.

“The right to vote is sacred,” Attorney General Dave Yost, a Republican, said in a statement at the time. “If you’re not a U.S. citizen, it’s illegal to vote -– whether you thought you were allowed to or not. You will be held accountable.”

In the end, their efforts led to just a handful of cases. Of the 621 criminal referrals for voter fraud that Secretary of State Frank LaRose sent to the attorney general, prosecutors have secured indictments against nine people for voting as noncitizens over the span of 10 years — and one was later found to have died. That total is a tiny fraction of Ohio’s 8 million registered voters and the tens of millions of ballots cast during that period.

The outcome and the stories of some of those now facing charges illustrate the gap — both in Ohio and across the United States — between the rhetoric about noncitizen voting and the reality: It’s rare, is caught and prosecuted when it does happen and does not occur as part of a coordinated scheme to throw elections.

Source: The GOP stoked fears of noncitizens voting. Cases in Ohio show how rhetoric and reality diverge

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Are noncitizens really voting in US elections?

2024/09/12 Leave a comment

Spoiler alert. This detailed review indicates they are not:

With illegal immigration one of the top issues on voters’ minds heading into the 2024 election, Republicans are making a nationwide push to require proof of citizenship in order to vote. The GOP-run House of Representatives passed a bill that would do just that, the SAVE Act, in July – with support from five Democrats.

Former President Donald Trump has also repeatedly urged such measures, including in Tuesday night’s debate, alleging that his opponents are irresponsibly encouraging undocumented immigrants to vote. “A lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote, they can’t even speak English, they don’t even know what country they’re in practically, and these people are trying to get them to vote,” he said.

Now Speaker Mike Johnson is saying that unless the House and Senate agree to the SAVE Act, he’ll shut down the government when the fiscal year ends Sept. 30 – though it appears he lacks the support within his own party to do so.

But Democrats, citing a lack of documented cases of noncitizen voting, say the law is unnecessary since it’s already illegal for noncitizens to vote. Moreover, they argue, it would result in disqualifying eligible voters. They accuse Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, of pushing this issue to lay the groundwork for claiming the election was stolen if they lose in November.

Is proof of citizenship currently required to vote?

The short answer is, citizenship is required in federal elections, but proof of citizenship generally isn’t, although some voters may provide that while establishing their identity and residency.

Sixteen municipalities allow noncitizens to vote in local elections, according to Ballotpedia. But elsewhere there’s pushback to the idea. Amendments to bar noncitizen voting are on the ballot this fall in eight states: Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Wisconsin.

Source: Are noncitizens really voting in US elections?

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Some cities allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. Their turnout is quite low

2024/05/06 Leave a comment

Of note. Not surprised. Those that argue that non-citizen voting will increase municipal vote turnout should look at this case study. Similar to those advocating for no restrictions on voting by Canadian expatriates; while the number of registered voters and votes casts doubled, the numbers were still tiny (55,000 registered) compared to an estimated expatriate adult population of less than three million:

Three cities in Vermont now allow non-U.S. citizen residents to vote in local elections.

Winooski is one of those municipalities. It just held its third local election with noncitizen voting.

“Thirteen hundred and 45 people participated in our annual city and school election,” Winooski Clerk Jenny Willingham said about March’s contests. “Eleven of those ballots cast were from our all-resident voting,” a category that includes green-card holders, refugees and asylum-seekers.

In Vermont and elsewhere, municipalities that allow noncitizen voting in local elections have seen similar low voter registration rates and turnout. Local leaders are trying to parse out why.

That’s as noncitizen voting has emerged as a national flashpoint this election year. Republicans including former President Donald Trump are pushing legislation aimed at stopping noncitizens from voting in federal elections — which is already illegal and, by all accounts, very rare.

Small numbers of ballots cast

In Winooski, getting those 11 noncitizen votes cast in March’s races took a lot of legwork for Willingham. She had the ballots printed in 12 languages and had four interpreters — speaking Burmese, Nepali, Swahili and Somali — working on Election Day.

Burlington, Vermont’s largest city, counted 62 votes by noncitizens, accounting for less than half of 1% of the nearly 15,000 total votes cast.

In Montpelier, the state’s capital, 13 noncitizens voted. There are so few noncitizen registered voters that Clerk John Odum keeps their paperwork in a half-inch blue binder.

This trend extends outside Vermont. Takoma Park, Md., legalized local noncitizen voting 30 years ago. Still, registration and turnout remain relatively low.

There are ongoing grassroots efforts in Vermont to increase voter participation among green-card holders, refugees and asylum-seekers. The League of Women Voters distributes pamphlets and holds info sessions.

The city of Burlington pays outreach workers like Jules Wetchi, an immigrant from the Democratic Republic of Congo, to connect with immigrant communities. Wetchi hosts local radio and TV shows geared at French-speaking new Americans.

“I did what they call civic education to push people to know how they should be engaged to vote, because it’s very important,” Wetchi said. “This is our second country. We are living here — we should be more engaged to the political situation.”

Fear as a barrier to voting

But Wetchi said fear is one of the barriers to the ballot box. People have told him they’re afraid they might get harassed when they vote. Others worry that voting might negatively affect their U.S. citizenship application, even if their city clerk assures them that it won’t.

Some of that fear stems from the national spotlight on this issue, which got brighter last month when Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson pushed a measure that would add citizenship documentation requirements for voters.

Vermont Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas, a Democrat, said she understands why some Vermonters are reluctant to have their names on a list of non-U.S. citizens that’s accessible with a public records request.

“We are a nation of immigrants. So it’s wild to imagine how we got to this place where we have to worry about these things,” she said.

Winooski and Montpelier were sued by the state and national Republican parties to try to stop local noncitizen voting. The lawsuits were thrown out, but Copeland Hanzas wondered whether they added to the chilling effect.

“I’m quite certain that there are more folks who would have been eligible to vote in those local elections,” she said.

In Washington, D.C., Republicans in Congress are trying to block a law that allows noncitizens to vote in local D.C. elections. The law went into effect in January. As of April 30, there were 372 noncitizens registered in a city with around 450,000 total registered voters.

D.C. Board of Elections staff members are doing their best to keep their heads down and not let the controversy affect their work, said Executive Director Monica Holman Evans.

“I receive the quote-unquote attacks or the quote-unquote comments, commentary, opinions about it,” she said. “And I’m just very clear that I don’t take an opinion on this or any other legislation that has been passed in the District of Columbia. Our job is to enforce what’s currently in effect.”

Vermont’s local election officials also said they feel the heat from the national spotlight. They know that one slip-up, like a presidential ballot being mailed to a noncitizen, could end up on the national news.

Larger jurisdictions like D.C. have voter databases that can track noncitizen voters. Vermont doesn’t yet; the secretary of state’s office said one is in the works.

In the meantime, clerks use Excel spreadsheets and three-ring binders to track noncitizen voters. Willingham, Winooski’s clerk, keeps her noncitizen voter registrations in a manila folder in a filing cabinet next to her desk.

“I feel like I check and then I recheck just to make sure that everything is correct, that they are only voting in the elections that our charter has declared,” she said.

Despite the low turnout, the mere fact that noncitizen voting is on the books means a lot to many immigrants in Vermont. Wetchi’s mother recently made the move to Vermont from the Democratic Republic of Congo. She speaks only Swahili and a local dialect, but Wetchi said he hopes she can vote one day.

“Because her voice is very important. Her voice can change many things,” he said.

The thing is, Wetchi and his family just moved to the city of South Burlington, which doesn’t have noncitizen voting. His mom can’t vote there. But he can — he’s a full citizen. He’s even thinking about running for office one day.

Source: Some cities allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. Their turnout is quite low

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Column: Is it time to let noncitizens vote in local elections? Some Americans think that’s just nutty

2021/08/11 1 Comment

Even at the municipal level questionable, particularly in Canada with reasonable and not excessive requirements. And it still raises issues regarding minimum residency and other requirements:

Should noncitizens be allowed to vote?

That sounds a little crazy, doesn’t it? Weren’t we taught growing up that the right to vote belongs only to full-fledged, passport-eligible citizens of this country?

Nonetheless, the movement to expand immigrants’ voting rights is gaining ground.

We pay taxes, immigrants say. We run businesses. We send kids to public schools, drive the roads, ride the subways and fight in America’s wars. We are stakeholders in our communities and shouldn’t be excluded from the decision-making process that affects us.

There’s currently a bill before the New York City Council to let legal permanent residents vote in municipal elections — up to and including mayoral elections. Since 2018, San Francisco has allowed noncitizens to vote in school board elections, regardless of whether they’re in the country legally or not. Chicago allows it for school council elections.

Here in Los Angeles, the L.A. Unified school board authorized a study more than a year ago on how to extend voting rights in school board elections to noncitizen parents, grandparents and caregivers. The study — which would presumably lead to a ballot measure — was delayed by the pandemic but will be revived as school reopens.

There’s no question that noncitizen voting rights is a radical notion. It’s understandably worrisome to those who believe citizenship matters.

And you don’t have to be a xenophobe or a white nationalist or a Trump voter to feel that way.

A few years ago, then-Gov. Jerry Brown, whose liberal credentials are pretty impeccable, vetoed a bill passed by the California Legislature that would have allowed permanent legal residents to serve on juries, saying: “Jury service, like voting, is quintessentially a prerogative and responsibility of citizenship.”

Citizenship is a concept, a construct — but it’s a meaningful one. The idea is that there is a difference between merely living in the U.S. and being a full participant in its democratic self-government. Many people are stakeholders, but citizens are more like shareholders.

Becoming a citizen is a process (unless you’re born here, in which case it’s simple luck). At the end of it — after you’ve waited your time, lived in the U.S., taken a test, paid your fees, pledged your loyalty — you are rewarded for your formal commitment with both rights and responsibilities.

And there’s a value to waiting. The term “assimilation” is out of favor (perhaps because it implies that immigrants must check their differences at the door), but “incorporation” and “integration” are still important — learning the language, understanding the culture, making sure you buy into the rules and values laid out in the Constitution. Shared citizenship is a unifying force.

My mother, who came to America during World War II, went through this process, becoming a citizen seven years after she arrived.

Nevertheless, despite everything I’ve just said, I’ve come around to the idea that we should try noncitizen voting anyway, at least in a limited way on the most local level. The advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

After all, the United States was founded on the promise of “no taxation without representation” — yet there are some 25 million people living in the country, more than half of them legally, who are unable to participate in the elections that affect their lives and livelihoods. And yes, most of them pay taxes.

When a segment of the population is excluded from the political process, it can lead to discriminatory public policy and mistreatment.

Furthermore, noncitizen voting was widespread in the U.S. at the beginning of the nation’s history; it ended only in the 1920s. It is permitted in 45 countries around the world in local or regional elections, and in some cases, at the national level.

Noncitizen voting in federal elections was barred in 1996, but where it’s been allowed in the U.S. in recent years — in 11 towns in Maryland as well as San Francisco, two cities in Vermont and a few other jurisdictions — the sky hasn’t fallen. In many cases, it has led to greater political engagement and often to “improved outcomes,” says Ron Hayduk, a political science professor at San Francisco State.

Hayduk argues that noncitizen voting on the local level can be seen as part of the process of becoming a citizen, rather than a substitute for it. It undoubtedly fosters a sense of belonging and investment in the community.

It’s all well and good to tell immigrants to wait their turn to vote, but gaining citizenship is caught up in the U.S. immigration system, which is broken and irrational by all accounts, with no fix in sight.

In contrast, a limited experiment in noncitizen voting by the L.A. Unified School District makes sense. After all, the school board cited an estimate that 42% of Southern California’s children have at least one parent who is not a citizen, without a voice in the district’s leadership.

The expansion of the franchise should be narrow. It should be for school board elections only, and it could be restricted to legal permanent residents with children in the system. Let’s try it and see what happens.

Noncitizen voting raises fundamental questions about our country. Who is an American? Who gets to set the rules? What does it mean to run a country “with the consent of the governed”? What are the costs if millions of stakeholders are excluded from decision-making?

This experiment would challenge our assumptions but perhaps make us stronger in the long run.

Source: Column: Is it time to let noncitizens vote in local elections? Some Americans think that’s just nutty

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