immigrants voting?
The Christian Science Monitor reported last week that some cities are pushing to allow legal immigrants to vote in local elections. "Six Maryland communities already allow the practice, Chicago lets legal immigrants vote for school board members." However other attempts to open local elections to legal immigrants were blocked by state lawmakers. Now, the Monitor reports, "the movement is gaining traction again, mainly in liberal-leaning communities." Non-citizen voting may seem odd but citizenship is just one of many possible prerequisites for voting and there is no necessary reason to keep non-citizens from voting. Historically, in the U.S., there were several more important prerequisites: race, property ownership, sex, and age.
Those prerequisites have, at least formally, been abrogated by subsequent amendments to the Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment opened voting to all males of 21 years which implicitly striped property and race prerequisites (for men). The Fifteenth Amendment explicitly striped race prerequisites from voting because the implicit action of the Fourteenth Amendment wasn't sufficient. The Nineteenth Amendment opened voting to women. The Twenty-sixth Amendment set the voting age at 18. In each case these were negative commands to the states. They did not define who could vote rather they specified certain qualifications could not be used to limit the right to vote. The states were at all times free to open voting wider than what the Constitution defined. For example, a state could allow all people 13 and older to vote. So states now, if they wish, can allow non-citizens to vote.
Indeed in other countries non-citizen voting in local elections is sometimes found. In England, for example, Irish citizens are allowed to vote in certain local English elections while living in England. Thus my English Legal History professor Joan Mahoney, who has both U.S. and Irish citizenship and owns a home in Southern England (I can't recall the town), votes in her English town's local elections. (She noted she could also get a third passport because she is Jewish too.)
Should non-citizens be allowed to vote? I don't know. But let's not pretend that citizenship is the only (or even the most important) criteria.
Those prerequisites have, at least formally, been abrogated by subsequent amendments to the Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment opened voting to all males of 21 years which implicitly striped property and race prerequisites (for men). The Fifteenth Amendment explicitly striped race prerequisites from voting because the implicit action of the Fourteenth Amendment wasn't sufficient. The Nineteenth Amendment opened voting to women. The Twenty-sixth Amendment set the voting age at 18. In each case these were negative commands to the states. They did not define who could vote rather they specified certain qualifications could not be used to limit the right to vote. The states were at all times free to open voting wider than what the Constitution defined. For example, a state could allow all people 13 and older to vote. So states now, if they wish, can allow non-citizens to vote.
Indeed in other countries non-citizen voting in local elections is sometimes found. In England, for example, Irish citizens are allowed to vote in certain local English elections while living in England. Thus my English Legal History professor Joan Mahoney, who has both U.S. and Irish citizenship and owns a home in Southern England (I can't recall the town), votes in her English town's local elections. (She noted she could also get a third passport because she is Jewish too.)
Should non-citizens be allowed to vote? I don't know. But let's not pretend that citizenship is the only (or even the most important) criteria.