Talk Elections

Tuesday the College Park City Council voted 4-3 to allow non-citizens to vote in city elections even if they're illegally in the country. (http://wjla.com/news/local/heated-debate-continues-to-brew-in-college-park-over-allowing-non-citizens-to-vote)

Is that Constitutional?

I think Tacoma Park, MD, allows 14-year-olds to vote in local elections, so I think it's fine, constitutionally. Or, at least, has yet to be challenged.

Nothing that happens in that sh**t hole town surprises me.

It was common practice for most of the 19th century.

Here is what Wikipedia has:

Good, good, give more ammunition to the Republican outlets to rage over. Fantastic.

This...this can't be constitutional, let alone should not be allowed.

One of the privileges of being a citizen is having the right to vote.  You can't just walk into the United States and vote.

This is ridiculous.

College Park is like Berkeley east.  No surprise.

I would have no problem with this if it were limited to immigrant aliens, i.e. green card holders. Immigrant aliens have virtually all of the rights and responsibilities of citizens anyway, including the right to participate in the political process. But extending the right to non-immigrant aliens and even illegal aliens is insane.

Yeah, but there is a difference between non-citizen voting and illegal immigrant voting.

I am shocked, shocked I tell you, at all the conservatives dismissing state and local authority.

I can't think of any grounds on which it could be declared unconstitutional.

Doing it for illegal immigrants seems really odd but allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections is very reasonable and the law here in Sweden.

I did look back at the 15th Amendment.  It does look like it's up to interpretation since it doesn't explicitly state that non-citizens can't vote.  It just outlines how citizens can vote.

If I were a judge or justice, however, I would strike it down.

IF they're legal non-citizens, and it's limited to local elections, I'm okay with it, but that's it. Anything beyond that is too much.

I can agree with this as a compromise.

The illegal immigrant part is the entire issue. There is no "compromise".

It is only for local elections, and, as was mentioned, is not uncommon in Maryland.


lol.  If you're going to say some Maryland suburb is like Berkeley, the answer is obviously Takoma Park.  College Park is... really painfully un-Berkeley-like.

The 15th Amendment has nothing to do with it.

It sounds like you're saying that you would strike the law down on policy grounds without any sound legal reasoning for doing so. Isn't that the "judicial activism" you blue avatars are always railing against?

Obviously a state law could put an end to this. A federal prohibition? Less clear.

I mean, you can be for or against this (it seems clear based on the narrowness of the vote that it was a controversial decision within the community), but a great deal of 19th-century precedent suggests that this is constitutional, and would in fact be constitutional if adopted on the state level; it is only federal elections (so, presidential and congressional races) that non-citizens are constitutionally barred from voting in.

Ok thank you for the clarification

EDIT: Thanks as well, Vosem

FF town!

How would an illegal resident register to vote? Or they could just walk in and vote without having to give their name or anything? I always have to say who I am at least and and give my address so they can check me off of their list from my registration.

At least in the past, illegal immigrants from NY/NJ sometimes went to Maryland to get driver's licenses.

Pretty much this.

Good. No taxation without representation, no exceptions. Hopefully this will soon be statewide.

::) Tourists pay taxes. Children pay taxes. Should they get a vote too?

I agree with this. One of the primary problems with largescale immigration is that it creates a large underclass that, due to their subjugated and rightless status, end up competing with the native working-class to the mutual detriment of both groups and benefit of the elite. Their are two ways to eliminate this problem: one would be monstrous deportation that would no doubt make the jackbooted thugs of right-Atlas happy, the other would be to dispatch of ethe ludicrous-identity politics of those without a scrap of paper lacking basic rights.

Cities and local authorities can determine who votes in their specific elections. It's not like we are talking about federal elections, so no one can scream that the evil forces are trying to cheat Trump and Republicans.

Tourists shouldn't pay taxes, and we should have a tax reimbursement system like the EU operated by the states to account for this. Hence, they should not be able to vote. I am firmly of the belief that someone who does pay taxes, no matter how young, should be elligible to vote, at least for the authority that levied those taxes.

A tourist from Texas visiting New York pays New York sales taxes. No such mechanism exists in other countries for domestic tourists getting their sales tax refunded. Would you refund their sales taxes too? Imagine the cost of administering such a system in every state. Furthermore, while sales taxes are refunded in many countries, other taxes such as tourism taxes, airport taxes, fuel taxes, excise taxes, and hotel taxes are not refunded.

And as far as children voting goes, if you consider them responsible enough to vote just like adults can, you have to also consider them responsible for their actions just like adults. It's a ludicrous path to go down.

I disagree with this. This is why Democrats and liberals are seen as hypocrites. Cry about a foreign nation, Russia influencing the 2016 election then turn around and allow non-citizens to vote.

Non-citizens are non-citizens. They should not be allowed to vote. Why is that so hard for some leftists to comprehend?

When they get U.S. citizenship, then they can vote.

Embarrassingly, the supporters of the amendment realized that they changed the city charter in June to require six votes to change the city charter; they had only four.  See here: https://www.facebook.com/collegeparkmd/posts/1556910414354545

ugh maryland.

Non-citizens could vote in all *federal* elections at the time of the Founders. Revise your assumptions about what is un-American or unconstitutional.

four million American citizens from Guam, the Pacific islands, Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico say hello :(

LMAO, I know right? What hypocrisy

As for constitutionality, the constitution only says who can vote, not who can't. A state or municipality could allow dogs and mushrooms to vote if they wanted to.

There is no legal difference in citizenship from US citizens from the unincorporated territories and those from the 50 states, with the exception of American Samoans with no connection to the 50 states, who are technically non-citizen US nationals. (which is an unfortunate situation) If a Californian moves to San Juan, they disenfranchise themselves from Presidential elections, and if a Puerto Rican moves to San Diego, they have the same political franchise as their mainland-born neighbors. The ineligibility of residents in unincorporated territories to vote for President is a matter of rights and corresponding responsibilities. Not all of the Constitution (from which voting rights originate) applies in unincorporated territories, and they are also free to establish their own customs, immigration, social, and business laws to some extent. They could also choose to become independent or negotiate a free association relationship with the US, while the states are bound in an indivisible union.

One of the only ways for a US citizen, national, or resident alien to not pay federal income tax is to live in an unincorporated territory. Not even US citizens living abroad are exempt from federal income tax, which is why they are entitled to vote for President, while residents of the unincorporated territories are not.

An argument could possibly be made that since unincorporated territories are under US sovereignty, and thus cannot establish their own foreign policy while they retain their legal status, that should be enough reason on its own for their residents to be able to vote for President, but that is a complex Constitutional issue. The Constitution was not meant to handle an empire. I'm sympathetic to such views, but the voting rights situation in the unincorporated territories is definitely not a matter of the federal government being mean to non-whites in distant territories.

I'd rather children vote than non-citizen adults vote.

It's illegal under current law but certainly not unconstitutional. Noncitizens routinely voted in federal elections in the 19th century (in some states that permitted it).

Looking back at things, I can see more clearly how this is allowed. It's just a little strange. I have problems with illegal immigrants voting, but with non-citizens, at the local level, this should be fine imo