Thread: ME Bill would let non-citizens of US vote in local election

Please provide link to article, Worried American.

Link
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story ... 4&ac=PHnws

What is wrong with me today.... ?

I'm sure there's a constitutional violation here somewhere.

According to the story below, a number of local immigrants themselves don't agree with this proposed legislation.

Bill would allow non-citizens to vote in local elections

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BY MATT WICKENHEISER
KENNEBEC JOURNAL Morning Sentinel
03/27/2009

AUGUSTA -- 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.

http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/n ... 21606.html

Some days it's just too depressing to think about the future. I grew up in a small town with all types of space, security, friendliness, homogeneity and camaraderie. We didn't even lock our doors when we went away on vacation. Now I lock my door going to the mail-box and pick up litter every day.

I called the Secretary of State's Office to complain today. I got the typical bureacratic run-around, "We will have to call you back on that". They wouldn't even tell me that the Secretary's position is a positive one. They were overly interested in getting my name and other personal information.

My family at one time was interested in moving to N. New England. In the last 10 or so years the three states of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine have become intentionly liberalized. Maine now sports an overwhelming number of Samolians in its second largest city. At one time, N NE was almost crime free, all-American, and was one of the best places to live in the US. For those of you who don't care, who believe wherever they live in the US this problem is not theirs, your time too is coming. We will be like France, no safe place to hide. Not in the mountains, not in the vast ag fields. No where.

As Takoma Park Goes, So Goes Maine

By Mark Krikorian, March 27, 2009

The Maine legislature is considering a bill to allow non-citizens to vote in municipal elections. Stanley Renshon, a CUNY political scientist and CIS Fellow, wrote last year on why this is a bad idea. (Takoma Park is the D.C. area's own little Berkeley/Madison/Cambridge, and allows non-citizen voting, as Renshon discusses.)

[For Mr. Renson's biography and writings, see:
http://cis.org/taxonomy/term/63 ]

http://www.cis.org/node/1128

Center for Immigration Studies
http://www.cis.org/

Originally Posted by prebanjoe

I called the Secretary of State's Office to complain today. I got the typical bureacratic run-around, "We will have to call you back on that". They wouldn't even tell me that the Secretary's position is a positive one. They were overly interested in getting my name and other personal information.

My family at one time was interested in moving to N. New England. In the last 10 or so years the three states of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine have become intentionly liberalized. Maine now sports an overwhelming number of Samolians in its second largest city. At one time, N NE was almost crime free, all-American, and was one of the best places to live in the US. For those of you who don't care, who believe wherever they live in the US this problem is not theirs, your time too is coming. We will be like France, no safe place to hide. Not in the mountains, not in the vast ag fields. No where.

The Suckretary of State is DoneLap, yes, he is pushing the hell out of it. He wanted licenses for illegals too.
We won that one and it went into effect in November.
Matthew DoneLap(Dunlap) came out in February saying they were repealing that too now!
He's the biggest problem....

Here's another updated story on the issue.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story ... 8&ac=PHnws

Voting bill constitutional

State House: Non-citizens already have some voting rights in other states.
By BETH QUIMBY, Staff Writer March 28, 2009
The sponsor of a bill that would allow people who are not U.S. citizens to vote in municipal elections said he is confident his proposal is constitutional.

State Sen. Justin Alfond, D-Portland, said he is getting both positive and negative response to his proposal, and said those who contend that the Maine Constitution would block the measure are incorrect.
The bill, LD 1195, is aimed at allowing non-citizen immigrants to vote on local issues. Proponents say the measure would encourage immigrants to become more active in their communities, giving them more incentive to pursue U.S. citizenship.

Critics say that voting should be reserved for U.S. citizens who have the language skills and knowledge to make informed choices.

Some election-law experts and legal scholars say the proposal could pass constitutional muster.

Cabanne Howard, assistant professor at the University of Maine School of Law in Portland, said the U.S. Constitution "surprisingly" covers voter eligibility only in federal elections.

The Maine Constitution addresses voter eligibility for state elections, and state law now requires all voters, at both the municipal and state level, to be U.S. citizens. However, any new law redefining voter eligibility would supersede current laws, officials said.

Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap said he sees nothing unconstitutional about the proposal, as long as the voting system set up by the municipality is totally separate from the state and federal process.
Municipalities already are in charge of their own elections, he said. They produce their own ballots and conduct their own recounts.

"It is already a separate process. This proposal creates nothing new," said Dunlap.

Maine Deputy Attorney General Linda Pistner said language in the proposed bill needs to make a change in law clear to avoid any problems.

Measures to give non-citizens some voting rights have become more common across the country. In Maryland, for instance, where the state constitution requires U.S. citizenship for state-level elections, municipalities governed by municipal charters may allow non-U.S. citizens to vote in local elections.

A half-dozen Maryland municipalities have done just that.

Many of the details of Alfond's measure are being left to the Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee to hammer out. Alfond said his idea is have the measure apply only to non-citizens here legally, and said it would be up to each municipality's governing body to decide whether non-citizens could vote.

Alfond said he's not surprised his proposal has sparked so much response.

"I am excited to have this discussion with my peers in Augusta, and if we all choose this as something to move forward, it will be up to municipalities to have their own discussions about how we look at Maine's diversity," he said.

Staff Writer Beth Quimby can be contacted at 791-6363 or at:

bquimby@pressherald.com

Do legal American criminals sitting in prison get to vote? Last time I looked they could not until they had served their sentences and were reinstituted into the voter rolls legally. (Fla. had a fuss over this in 2000, where dead people could still vote but anyone released from jail had to fight tooth and nail to get the right back, even years after release.)
Why is there even consideration of these people over here, either on a visa with a time limit or here illegally, to determine the fate of the communities which will no longer affect them after they (hopefully) are gone.
Our forefathers fought with their lives to make this country, and now we are giving everything we hold sacred to whomever wanders in here.