reflecting on my voting record and life as a migrant

[amw]

For entirely selfish reasons, i really wish the US election season was limited, like it is in pretty much every other democracy. The reason is that apparently no matter my intent beforehand, i still end up getting suckered into following the horse race, for nigh on TWO FUCKING YEARS out of every four. It's ridiculous. "She doesn't even go here

Comments

[siglinde99]

I have mixed feelings about it. The government did try to limit voting to people who hadn’t been out of the country for more than X number of years, but that was a disaster politically for all the immigrant politics reasons. Then they tried limiting votes to those who were no more than one generation away from being born in Canada or a naturalized citizen. That also proved problematic as people born abroad but with strong ties to Canada who happen to be working abroad for short periods would not be able to pass on automatic citizenship to children born abroad. That would be the case for both my kids, for example.

Some countries do have a foreign vote representative. Italy is one, I believe. I remember it being an issue at one point because dual citizenship already complicates decision-making for many people, and this would make it worse in some ways (at least according to the talking points we were given at the time). On the other hand, countries like China, Brazil and Germany (after the age of 21) do not allow dual citizenship at all. And dual citizenship/emigration is a nightmare from a consular perspective. Canada has hundreds of people incarcerated abroad who are not considered Canadian citizens by they country where they were living/visiting when they were jailed, but Canada is expected to visit, advocate for them, and ideally get them out of jail (but not necessarily back to Canada where they would be safe. Though the Canadian consular officials might want that, they sometimes run into resistance from the incarcerated person).

I am a firm believer that people should vote where they have a stake. Does someone who lives in Lebanon or Israel for 30 years still have a stake in Canadian politics? What about the Mennonites in Paraguay or Mexico who have passed on citizenship for generations, but only come to Canada to find a wife? Conversely, why shouldn’t you be able to vote in local elections when you have lived in a particular city for a certain amount of time, regardless of your citizenship? Do I think that should apply at the provincial and federal levels as well? Possibly. But administratively it would all be a nightmare in Canada, and possibly worse in many other countries. And what would the criteria be, and how do we ensure they are applied fairly everywhere around the world?

When my dad was in the military and serving abroad, the riding he had to vote in was the one where he had lived when he joined up. His entire family had to vote there too. Dad hadn’t lived there since he was 17. I never lived there at all. That is a slightly different case as there was no question about ties to Canada, but it illustrates one of the challenges. Could emigrants chose their riding/ward and sway an election from abroad based on issues that have little to do with the realities in Canada? In these days of electoral interference, I’m afraid the answer may well be yes. And that is wrong to me.

[annaserene]

As a life-long dual citizen of Germany and the U.S., and as someone whose mother received permission as an adult to keep her German citizenship and acquire U.S. citizenship, there are exceptions.

There is a loop-hole for Japan, which is an open secret and only really becomes controversial when it concerns a famous person (such as Naomi Osaka), though there are fewer ways or instances of it compared to Germany. Japan is stricter and doesn't make exceptions on purpose.

I even met someone from China who acquired New Zealand citizenship but managed to hang on to her Chinese passport. I asked her about it but apparently she could simply use it at the airports in China and no one asked questions (similar to Japan), at least at the time.

Anyway, you raise a lot of interesting points.

[amw]

This is a really interesting comment, thank you for sharing!

I feel similarly that the right delineation should be you vote where you have a stake. If you are an overseas Canadian who still has family, property etc in Canada then i think it's reasonable you should still be able to have a say in Canadian politics, even if you haven't lived there in decades. On the other hand, if you are a new migrant who doesn't hold citizenship but still exists as an active member of the community - whether by working or studying or simply paying rent and buying produce - i think you also should be able to vote.

The challenge is definitely that this ideology starts to get some friction when geopolitics enter the fray, and especially dual citizenship is problematic if the potential voter holds citizenship of two countries that are in conflict with one another. My intuition is that the number of people with dual citizenship who might be influenced or pressured by state actors from authoritarian country B to vote in a way that weakens democratic country A is probably not enough to tip the election in a way that favors country B, especially if country B is anyway spamming country A's social media with their propaganda, or threatening family members who still live in country B. I could be wrong and the actual numbers are significant enough to make a difference, but to me that just makes it even more important to grant non-citizen residents who truly are invested in a country's success more of a say than they currently have, which is virtually none.

It seems like a bureaucratic nightmare, but in reality the tax office already does this to identify people who are resident for tax purposes. Perhaps some fractional percentage slip through the cracks, but as long as they can keep the fraud rate below a certain threshold then it's good enough in practice.

If i could wave a magic wand, i think that's how i would change voting worldwide. If you spend 183 days of the preceding calendar year in a country, you get to vote in their federal elections. Ditto for province and city. If you didn't live there 6 months yet, sorry, you don't get the chance this time around, but you will next time. Obviously this disenfranchises globetrotting digital nomads, but that's why we should also have international institutions like the EU where we can vote and maybe one day a representative body in the UN as well. There would still be people who complain that yeah but household registration and proof of residence discriminates against the homeless or whatever, but that's an orthogonal problem that applies to every aspect of how government services are provided, not just voting. Humanity has been dealing with census issues going back to antiquity, i think by now it's a known problem space and it should be seen as a fundamental task of government to figure out how to reach everyone effectively.