Lawmakers are preparing to consider a bill that would let communities choose to allow non-U.S. citizens to vote in municipal elections.
Proponents argue that letting non-citizen immigrants vote on local issues would include them in the community, and provide incentive for them to pursue citizenship.
Critics say voting is a right that should be reserved for U.S. citizens, and some suggest that newcomers to the country don't necessarily have the language skills or the knowledge of issues needed to make an informed vote.
The bill, LD 1195, was sponsored by Sen. Justin Alfond, D-Portland, and co-sponsored by Rep. Brian Bolduc, D-Auburn. It was referred this week to the Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee.
Alfond said he spoke to a number of households in his one-time role as state director of the League of Young Voters. He would talk to residents about issues in upcoming local elections, Alfond said, and then learn that they couldn't vote because they weren't U.S. citizens.
"I want to look at this," said Alfond. "Is there a way to give people in our communities a bigger way to be involved?"
There's a variety of legal Maine residents who are not U.S. citizens, said Alfond, including doctors, refugees, students, hockey players and more.
Some might live here legally for decades without becoming citizens, meaning they can't vote on local issues that affect them, he said. And a citizen might move to the state for a year, take part in an election and then move away.
Alfond said that didn't seem right.
Allowing that part of the community to vote would be inclusive, said Alfond, and would give more people a voice. It also would give them an incentive to become citizens, so they could vote in state and national elections as well, he said.
Specifics on the bill would need to be hammered out in the committee, but Alfond said he envisions it applying to immigrants who are here legally. And it would be community governing bodies -- town or city councils -- that could vote to allow the non-citizens to vote in local elections.
Ron Hayduk, professor of political science at the Borough of Manhattan Community College and author of the book "Democracy for All," said immigrants who are not citizens are allowed to vote in a number of communities.
Chicago, for instance, allows them to vote in school elections, and six towns in Maryland allow them to vote in all local elections. They can vote in the Massachusetts towns of Cambridge, Amherst and Newton, said Hayduk, and proposals have been made to do the same in Chelsea and Somerville, and likely will resurface in Boston after a 2007 defeat.
The basic argument for allowing non-citizens to vote is that groups excluded from voting are more likely to be discriminated against, said Hayduk.
"It thwarts the power, the potential and promise of democracy," said Hayduk. "We're all served by having a government that's more representative, more accountable and more responsive to all its members."
Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap said the mechanics of allowing non-citizens to vote would be pretty simple. They couldn't be included in the electronic, federally funded voter rolls, so a separate paper list of voters would have to be kept, said Dunlap.
Dunlap said he doesn't think Alfond's proposal does any harm.
"Whenever you get more people to participate, you add legitimacy to that process," said Dunlap. "The voice of the public, I think, is extraordinarily important."
Hans Von Spakovsky, a legal scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said he sees several problems with allowing non-citizens to vote.
If local, state and federal elections are generally printed on the same ballot, they would have to be separated to allow non-citizens to vote, he said.
And getting a voter registration card could be a way to thwart federal labor laws, he said.
"At the core of it, I think it's a bad idea, because people who are here as residents are not people who have assimilated and become part of the American culture and the American society," said Von Spakovsky, whose parents were both immigrants. "They have made a decision not to become U.S. citizens. That means they have not entered the U.S. social compact."
Reaction was mixed in Portland's immigrant community.
Mohamud Barre, president of the Somali Culture and Development Association of Maine, said he's concerned that many immigrants aren't informed enough to vote.
"They don't know what's going on, they don't speak English," said Barre, who is originally from Somalia.
When immigrants get the right to vote through citizenship, said Barre, they've spent time learning about the country and working on language skills. That allows them to become informed, he said.
"They have at least learned what's going on -- they can make a decision," he said.
Sam Udomsay, who came to this country from Thailand when he was only 4 and got his citizenship about 10 years ago, said he's not sure many immigrants would have an idea of how the process works.
"I guess it would be a great idea to allow them to vote, if they had more knowledge of what was going on," said Udomsay, 32, of Westbrook.
Udomsay said that immigrant communities tend to have leaders. He said he would be concerned that if non-citizens didn't understand the issues, they might just vote the way their leaders instructed them.
Udomsay also said that people should earn the right to vote.
Source: Morning Sentinel
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