Election Integrity Wins: Noncitizen Voting

Election Integrity Wins That Upset the Left (full series)
SAVE Act | 2024 vs. 2020 Elections | Noncitizen Voting
Winning in Court | Texas vs. Big Tech

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Noncitizen Voting

Democratic-led cities, such as New York City and Washington, DC, have enacted laws allowing foreign nationals to vote in local elections, raising concerns about additional strain on election workers and potential errors.

In one election integrity victory from the litigation front, the Appellate Division for the Second Judicial Department in New York ruled 3-1 that the New York City law violated the state’s constitution. Thus, noncitizens are no longer eligible to vote in the Big Apple.

In 2024, eight states—Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Wisconsin—placed constitutional amendments on the ballot to prevent local jurisdictions from allowing noncitizens to vote.

If past is prologue, these amendments will pass overwhelmingly in November.

In 2022, voters approved constitutional amendments requiring citizen-only voting by 73 percent in Louisiana and 77 percent in Ohio, according to Ballotpedia. In 2020, voters backed similar constitutional amendments by 79 percent in Florida, 77 percent in Alabama, and by 62 percent in blue Colorado. In 2018, 65 percent of voters in North Dakota approved such an amendment.

Although a 1996 federal law specifically prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections for president or members of Congress, it doesn’t block voting in local elections.

Further, the 1993 National Voter Registration Act—better known as the Motor Voter Law—requires voter registration at state motor vehicle departments and social services agencies. With 18 states and the District of Columbia granting driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, this creates vulnerabilities, according to the Only Citizens Vote Coalition.

In a case involving an Arizona law, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that states can’t require proof of citizenship for federal elections but may for state elections. Currently, Arizona keeps separate voter registration lists for state and federal elections.

California, Illinois, Maryland, and Vermont allow non-U.S. citizens to vote in local elections, but not in state or federal elections. This approach, however, requires election officials to keep separate lists of registered voters. The problem is that this adds complexity and the potential for errors. Critics argue this puts additional strain on election workers and requires significant trust in local government officials to manage the lists accurately. It also arguably makes it more likely noncitizen voters will slip through the cracks.

“It’s not quite the SAVE Act in these states, but it is a marker to overcome bad law at the federal level,” Snead said. “Most state constitutions say that all citizens can vote. Activists groups say that doesn’t mean only citizens can vote. So, this language clarifies that. We don’t want this happening in local and city elections either.”

In California, the cities of Oakland and San Francisco allow voting by noncitizens in local school board elections. The District of Columbia allows noncitizens to vote in all local elections, Chicago has allowed noncitizens to vote in school board elections since 1989. In Maryland, municipalities allowing foreign nationals to vote in local elections include Barnesville, Cheverly, Chevy Chase, Garrett Park, Glen Echo, Hyattsville, Martin’s Additions, Mount Rainier, Riverdale Park, Somerset, and Takoma Park. In Vermont, the cities of Burlington, Montpelier, and Winooski allow foreign nationals to vote.

The Left’s effort to recruit noncitizen voters is part of a larger effort, combined with the Left championing prisoner voting and lowering legal voting age, Snead said. “You have D.C. and other localities,” Snead said. “There is a movement that instead of the voters picking their government, the government will pick what people they want voting.”

“Protect the Vote”

In June, the Republican National Committee (RNC) launched its Protect the Vote Tour to hit several battleground states for the 2024 election.

The RNC’s Protect the Vote initiative is aimed at mobilizing 100,000 poll watchers, poll workers, and legal experts across the country to oversee whenever a ballot is being cast or counted in an election.

“President Trump’s Election Integrity team is protecting the vote and securing the election,” Gineen Bresso, Election Integrity Director for the Republican National Committee, and the Donald Trump campaign, told The Daily Signal. “While Democrats continue to try to weaken election systems and dismantle election integrity safeguards, we have undertaken an unprecedented operation to identify and fix the problems in our election system. We are defending the law and fighting for commonsense security measures that benefit all Americans – like stopping illegal immigrants from voting, mail ballot safeguards, voter ID measures, stopping leftist Dark Money, and cleaning the voter rolls.”

The effort was ramped up in late 2023 to recruit poll watchers. The tour aims to train volunteers across the country. The RNC planned to designate election directors in 15 states.

“Democrats would have an election system as open as Kamala’s border,” Bresso continued, referencing Vice President Kamala Harris appoint by President Joe Biden to oversee the southern border. “While they champion election interference, the RNC and Trump Campaign champion election integrity. We are winning in court, and have recruited over 150,000 volunteers for the election. We are protecting the vote for all Americans.”

The RNC is well behind the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in political infrastructure such as campaign offices, community centers, and canvassers in key states.

For almost 30 years, the RNC was handcuffed in election activities because of a consent decree that resulted from a DNC lawsuit that alleged voter intimidation in New Jersey during the 1981 governor’s election. A judge lifted the consent decree in 2018.

A DNC spokesperson did not respond for this story.

But the Associated Press quoted DNC spokesperson Alex Floyd asserting the party, “won’t let MAGA Republicans get away with these baseless attacks on our democracy, and we will continue to use every tool at our disposal to ensure that all Americans can make their voice heard at the ballot box.”

Democrats have pushed the notion that Republican-recruited poll watchers means intimidation of voters and election workers. That’s an extremely dishonest and scaremongering argument.

It’s important to note that poll watchers have been a constant in American elections for decades. Even if the RNC wanted to recruit a bunch of random MAGA thugs to bully voters, they couldn’t. Poll watchers are highly regulated by states, with limits on how many people can be designated. Also, only political parties—or in some states also civic groups—can designate someone to be a poll watcher, such as the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures explains.

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In the next installment, election integrity advocates have won some clear victories in the courts, but not always.

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/election-integrity-wins-part-3/