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DENVER: Voters in Colorado, Florida, and Alabama passed ballot measures on Tuesday (Nov. 3) that codify what is already law: that only U.S. citizens age 18 and older can vote.
The passage of the largely symbolic measures has raised questions about why the pro-Trump group behind them wasted time and money on the effort.
The amendments were overwhelmingly approved in all three states, even by a nearly 8-to-1 ratio in Alabama and Florida. Before the 2020 elections, North Dakota and Arizona were the only state constitutions that specified that non-citizens could not vote in state or local elections.
A former Missouri Republican state legislator who led the effort said the ballot measures were necessary to combat recent changes that allow non-US citizens to vote in some local elections.
Opponents respond that the measures are unnecessary and fuel anti-immigrant sentiment.
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On the Colorado ballot, the question read, “Will there be an amendment to the Colorado constitution that requires that to be qualified to vote in any election, an individual must be a citizen of the United States?” The Alabama and Florida ballots had similar language.
Had the measures failed, it would have kept the Colorado state constitutional language of “allowing all eligible American citizens to vote in Colorado elections.”
Julian Camera, a campaign manager that opposed the measure in Colorado and a field organizer for the Colorado American Civil Liberties Union, said the ballot language is misleading.
“They are giving voters the impression that there is still no citizenship requirement to vote in almost every election nationwide,” he said.
The amendments were overwhelmingly approved in all three states. (Photo: AP)
A Florida-based organization called Citizen Voters Inc funded most of the state campaigns for these amendments, including $ 1.4 million for Colorado’s efforts, according to public documents filed with the Secretary of State.
The group’s founder is John Loudon, a former Republican state senator in Missouri and a former adviser to America First Policies, a group that supports President Donald Trump. Loudon said the ballot amendments were necessary because the current constitutional language is not strong enough.
“The language we have now is objectively, demonstrably not sufficient due to all the successful efforts to grant legal voting rights to non-citizens, at least in local and school board elections across the country,” Loudon said.
US cities have considered measures to varying degrees to allow non-citizens, such as legal permanent residents, also known as green card holders, or immigrants living in the US without legal permission and student visa holders, vote in local elections for school boards or town halls.
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Many attempts have failed, including a New York City bill that aimed to give green card holders and immigrants with work visas the ability to vote in municipal elections.
San Francisco allows non-citizen residents of the city to vote in school board elections if the voter is a parent or legal guardian of a child in the school system. In Maryland, 11 municipalities allow non-citizens to vote in local elections.
“It seems like a lot of energy is being spent giving up these rights and diluting the franchise, diluting the voting power for people who are fully engaged,” Loudon said.
In Alabama, the Republican leader of the state Senate, President Pro Tempore Del Marsh, sponsored the measure in 2019. It was passed by both houses of the Alabama Legislature without a vote against and was put on the ballot for voter consideration.
Denise Maes, director of public policy for the Colorado American Civil Liberties Union, called the amendment “petty” and “wrong.”
She said the Colorado initiative was intended to suppress voting in Colorado, including 17-year-olds who previously qualified to vote in the primaries if they turned 18 by the November election under a Colorado law passed just before the primaries. March presidential elections.
The amendment would remove these rights due to new language that states that “only” those 18 and older are eligible. Camera says it awaits legal battles to determine whether the new amendment will overturn the old law.
“By passing, you are also empowering a narrative that is unwelcome to immigrants in our state and creates fear in voters by making them believe that we must protect our communities from immigrants, which is purely unfounded, xenophobic and divisive.” Camera said.
Loudon’s stance on the right to vote came from her great-great-grandmother, who worked for women’s suffrage. It maintains that the right to vote was “contested” and should be preserved for “committed citizens”, that is, those who buy a house and raise a family in a specific area.
Loudon believes that the right to vote in local elections is important because it is where decisions are made about which streets are fixed, what curriculum is taught, or where buses pass.
The chamber responds that all of these things are public services for which non-citizens and green card holders pay taxes.
Loudon said he plans to take his ballot measures to other states in future elections, though he declined to say which states he is targeting. He said he is optimistic that he will succeed elsewhere, as he did in Colorado, Florida and Alabama in Tuesday’s election.
“We are on a roll,” he said.
