The city of Frederick, Maryland, passed a landmark law last week that will allow all residents of the town outside Washington to vote in local elections. The law, dubbed “Everyone Votes,” grants the right to vote at the polls to all people living in the city, regardless of their immigration status. Some 6,000 non-citizen residents will be able to decide on local issues that concern them and on which they have previously had no say. The new rule will allow them to decide the city’s representatives in the local elections in the fall of 2025.
The case of this jurisdiction, home to some 79,000 inhabitants, of whom some 16,000 are Latino, according to the 2020 census, joins that of another dozen municipalities in the State of Maryland in which it is not necessary to have a resident card to express an opinion on matters such as school boards, garbage removal or city hall administration.
“These are people who have children in school, go to church, own businesses, own homes, pay taxes… Why don’t they have a vote like everyone else?” said Sebastian Brown, a strategist for the civil rights organization ACLU. Telemundo.
The US Constitution only grants the right to vote in federal elections to US citizens, but municipal elections can extend it to all residents if so provided by their legislation. Maryland, a state with a Democratic majority, is a rather rare case. In the whole country, only a few cities, in California, Vermont and Washington DC, have approved it, and in no case is it extrapolated to state elections.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives last May approved, with the support of some Democrats, a veto of the law that allows all residents of Washington, DC, regardless of whether they are citizens, to vote in local elections. The proposal has no chance of advancing in the Senate controlled by Democrats. Non-citizens are eligible to vote if they are at least 18 years old on Election Day, have been residents of DC for at least 30 days before the election, have not been deemed by a court to be legally incompetent to vote, and do not claim the right to vote in any state, territory or country.
In New York, the City Council has appealed the court decision that halted the 2022 law granting the right to vote to non-citizens with residency permits —green card— or work, so they could participate in city elections, including for mayor, public advocate, borough council and city council. “Empowering New Yorkers to participate in our local democratic process can only strengthen New York City by increasing civic engagement,” New York City Council spokesperson Rendy Desamours said in a statement.
The law would grant voting rights to some 800,000 New York residents, who would be able to decide on the election of the mayor and city council, among other issues.
Opponents of allowing non-citizens to vote argue that it would be against the Constitution, even though the Constitution refers only to federal elections. They also argue that allowing non-citizens to vote would encourage voter fraud, a typical argument made by Republicans since their candidate, Donald Trump, fueled that theory by losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden. However, the idea that non-citizens would risk fraudulently casting a ballot is highly unlikely, as they would risk regularizing their papers, ending up in jail or being deported.
In any case, in cities where non-citizens are allowed to vote, turnout is usually very low. In Burlington, Vermont, where residents with a disability are allowed to vote, green card and asylum seekers can influence local votes, few do. In the last local election only 62 out of a total of 15,000 votes were cast by non-citizens.
Those who support voting rights for all residents argue that they pay taxes like the rest of the population, but they cannot have a say in the issues that affect their daily lives.
“Many times we are like deaf-mutes, we have no rights, we don’t know what is happening. But it will not be like that anymore,” said Amilcar Covo, a resident of Frederick.
#Maryland #state #largest #number #municipalities #noncitizens #vote #local #elections