On a cold December night in 1773, the Sons of Liberty poured tea into Boston Harbor to protest taxation without representation. This Revolutionary War cry may seem like a thing of the past, more likely to be found in history textbooks than in modern debates, yet over two hundred years later, thousands are still fighting across Massachusetts for the same rights.
While only citizens can vote in federal elections, the right to vote in local elections is left to states and municipalities. For Massachusetts, the state constitution mirrors the federal one, limiting the right to vote to naturalized citizens. However, with 1.2 million immigrants in Massachusetts, making up 17% of the population, the distinction between citizens and foreign-born residents should not determine who can vote.
Just as the qualifications for being a property-owning white male have been abandoned over time, non-citizen voting is an often forgotten point of voting rights that we need to reexamine in a modern light. Once heralded as a beacon of democracy, Massachusetts now has the power — and perhaps the responsibility — to enfranchise noncitizens.
To many, extending the right to vote to this extent may seem unreasonable; in America, voting and citizenship seem to go hand in hand. In reality, for most of the nation’s history, noncitizens have been able to vote in some capacity. In fact, the original Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 used the word “inhabitant” and was not limited to “citizen” until 1822.
According to Harvard professor Alex Keyssar, when the US was founded, there was a blurred distinction between resident and citizen, and the naturalization process wasn’t even a formalized part of the federal government until 1809. In a country founded by immigrants, foreigners native-born were the norm, making voting for non-citizens a natural part of the new democracy. Even after some states like Massachusetts tightened voting laws, new Midwestern states adopted noncitizen voting as a way to attract settlers, sparking a revival of noncitizen suffrage in 1848.
If this was once the case, what led to the current distinction between resident and citizen? In general, the xenophobia generated by World War I ended noncitizen voting rights throughout the U.S. As immigrant communities of Eastern Europeans and Latin Americans grew without fully assimilating into American culture, the United States continued to go from a country made up of immigrants to the gaze of foreigners. as the cultural “other”.
This cultural shift prompted racist immigration reforms such as the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Immigration Act of 1924 that introduced strict ethnic quotas. In 1926, the final state, Arkansas, closed the door on noncitizen voting. This end of the right to vote was just another in a long list of voting restrictions, from poll taxes to literacy tests, aimed at disenfranchising poor black Americans and maintaining the status quo— in cultural.
Today, municipalities across the country are slowly starting to bring back voting without citizens. In the past two years, cities in Maryland and Vermont have passed laws allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections, and Chicago and San Francisco have pushed legislation related to voting in school board elections. New York City also recently attempted to enfranchise 800,000 residents — seeking to guarantee the right to vote in municipal elections to residents with legal status or work visas — but unfortunately the move was quickly overturned by the New York State Supreme Court for violating the state constitution requirement. of citizenship, which means that a referendum would be needed to pursue this issue further.
However, in Massachusetts, the home rule petition process provides a way around the requirements in the state constitution. Home rule is exactly what it sounds like: Towns in Massachusetts can request changes or exceptions to state law specific to the needs of their locality. Amherst, Brookline, Cambridge, Newton, Wayland and Somerville have already passed ordinances to give noncitizens the power to vote in local or school elections, but those laws cannot take effect until they are approved by the state legislature and the governor. which has not yet happened. .
Until the state legislature acts, progress on noncitizen voting in Massachusetts is at a standstill, but the new law providing driver’s licenses to immigrants without legal status may have opened a window for further change. This law, itself mired in controversy, represents a vital step forward for the rights of all Massachusetts residents and could pave the way for far-reaching local changes in the way Massachusetts law views immigrants.
This difference is particularly significant in Boston, where 13.5% of residents are non-citizens. In 2018, Boston City Councilwoman Andrea Campbell proposed local voting rights for Bostonians in the DACA program, with green cards or work visas, totaling 48,000 people. Although the measure was not implemented, candidate surveys conducted by Progressive Massachusetts predict that 10 of the 13 current Council members would favor a similar policy.
Non-citizen voting is also important in school board elections. Many parents pay taxes to their local schools without getting a say in their children’s education, and in San Francisco a noncitizen ballot measure increased turnout in school board elections. Enabling all residents to participate in Massachusetts communities helps the community as a whole by sparking conversations about civic engagement and ensuring that school boards represent the best interests of all students.
Furthermore, even for families pursuing citizenship, the naturalization process can take years. For Chetan Tiwari, a Bostonian who wrote about his experience for Boston University’s radio station, it would take him and his wife 12 years to gain voting rights through citizenship, at which point their children would had already passed through the local school system. . Although some worry that noncitizen voting rights will discourage naturalization, the path to citizenship can be long and complicated for many, and in the meantime, immigrants are affected every day by their state and local policies.
As more and more voting restrictions are enacted to disenfranchise marginalized communities, restoring noncitizen voting can also empower the voices of people of color in local politics. According to data from the most recent census, only 61.6% of Massachusetts’ population identifies as White only, but in the portion of the population eligible to vote (citizens 18 and older), 78.6% are White only. Based on these statistics, people of color are being underrepresented in local elections due in part to their lack of citizenship. Allowing legal immigrants to vote regardless of their naturalization status would move Massachusetts into a “multiracial democracy,” as Beth Huang, director of the MAVoter Table, explained.
With cities on board, a Democratic supermajority in the legislature, and progressive benefit rolls, what’s stopping noncitizen voting in Massachusetts from becoming a reality? Despite the Massachusetts Democratic Party’s platform supporting the right of all legal immigrants to vote in local elections, the legislature has failed to address these policies in a timely manner, and with the primary coming up, the issue of voting non-citizens are missing from many people. Priorities of Democratic candidates. This fight reflects a larger issue in our democracy: it is not enough to have representatives who agree with us. We need representatives who take action on issues that affect thousands of residents. So when you vote this September, remember your neighbors who are unable to do the same.
The original artwork for this magazine was created by Harvard College student Allaura Osborne for the exclusive use of HPR.
