The surge of asylum seekers during the Biden years brought with it efforts from immigration advocates to expand voting rights to noncitizens. As Politico observed earlier this year, “Non-citizen voting is still extremely rare in the United States, but there is a growing movement to legalize it.” That movement, however, sparked a pushback. On Tuesday, voters in eight states decisively passed ballot initiatives that explicitly limit voting in local elections to citizens, reflecting strong bipartisan sentiment.
Federal law limits voting in national elections to citizens. A 1996 immigration enforcement act, signed by President Bill Clinton, even criminalized noncitizen voting. At the time, Clinton said that the legislation strengthens “the rule of law by cracking down on illegal immigration at the border, in the workplace, and in the criminal justice system—without punishing those living in the United States legally.” That law, however, did not prohibit noncitizen voting in local elections, leaving that option up to states.
Gradually, municipalities in states that do not explicitly limit voting to citizens began allowing immigrants to vote, beginning with Takoma Park, Maryland in 1992. San Francisco, New York City, Oakland, and Washington, D.C. have since passed similar laws, though New York’s was ruled unconstitutional because the state constitution plainly designates voting as a privilege of citizens.
Opposition to noncitizen voting first mobilized after the passage of a widely publicized 2016 San Francisco charter amendment, which granted noncitizens voting privileges in some local races. A national poll taken after that vote found that more than seven in ten Americans opposed to the idea. Two years later, North Dakota became the first state to amend its constitution to prohibit noncitizen voting. The movement gained momentum amid the Biden-era migration surge, with six states, including Florida, Colorado, and Arizona, enacting bans ahead of Tuesday’s election. Now, North Carolina, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Wisconsin have joined that group, amending their constitutions explicitly to limit local elections to citizens.
Though immigration advocates have derided efforts to restrict noncitizen voting as “shameful” and “xenophobic,” voters widely back these laws. The first half-dozen state ballot initiatives on citizenship voting all passed with 60 percent or greater support. On Tuesday, voters were even more decisive. Even in Wisconsin, designated by election watchers as one of the country’s seven swing states, 70 percent of voters approved the constitutional amendment limiting voting to citizens. In Missouri, which paired the question of limiting voting to citizens with a broader election-reform initiative, a September poll found bipartisan support: 58 percent of Democrats, 71 percent of Independents, and 97 percent of Republicans specifically backed the portion of the proposal that would prohibit noncitizens from voting in local elections. Even six in 10 naturalized citizens supported the initiative. (In the vote on Tuesday, 68.5 percent of voters approved of the ballot initiative.)
A municipal vote on the subject, in deep-blue California, broke the same way. On Tuesday, citizens of Santa Ana decisively rejected a measure that would have allowed noncitizens to participate in local elections; the initiative garnered less than 38 percent support. Its opponents included the city’s mayor, Valerie Amezcua, who argued that the measure would put costly new burdens on the city’s election system and lead to expensive litigation.
Tuesday’s election brought with it one other significant state ballot question on voting. Nevada, one of only 14 states to require no identification of any sort to vote, placed on its ballot a measure to institute a photo ID requirement. Opponents of photo ID mandates argue that they disenfranchise voters without proper documents. “The proposed ID requirements disproportionately affect vulnerable groups,” the Las Vegas Sun opined. But polls have consistently shown that voters favor them in a society where everything from traveling to buying alcohol to applying for government benefits requires photo ID. Seventy-four percent of Nevada voters approved the measure on Tuesday.
Despite advocates’ efforts to demonize such voting measures, voters on Tuesday revealed themselves decisively in favor of integrity at the ballot box.
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