Petition drive held for non-citizen voting rights

Jason Wheeler, Multimedia Journalist Kristin DiCara, Multimedia Producer 3 days ago

PORTLAND, Maine (NEWS CENTER) -- The League of Young Voters and Portland's immigrant community are teaming up, pushing for voting rights for legal immigrants.

The city of Portland is home to nearly 7,000 legal immigrants, who make up almost 10% of the city's population. Legal immigrants pay taxes into the city, own businesses, and send their children to Portland schools. They use many of the services available to United States citizens, but have no say in how their tax money is spent.

"They are here, they are going to our public schools, and the city gets federal dollars from that. So they count when it comes to getting that federal money, but they suddenly don't count in November," says Will Everitt with the League of Young Voters.

In early March, the Portland Charter Commission voted not to add non-citizen voting rights to a long list of recommendations to the city's new charter by a slim margin, just 7-5. Some members of the commission questioned if it was even legal to allow non-citizens to vote in municipal elections. Other commission members said this is a decision best left to the people. Still one commissioner felt voting rights should be extended to U.S Citizens only.

"The Charter Commission did vote it down, but by a very narrow margin," says Commission member Anna Trevorrow. "What that says to me is that the commission was educated through this process. I think we can do the same thing for the whole city of Portland going forward."

The League of Young Voters, along with several members of Portland's immigrant community have formulated a petition drive. They will have until July 14th to gather just over 5,000 signatures to have the question put on the November ballot. If the question does pass, immigrants would have to prove they are in the country legally, and even then would only be allowed to vote in citywide elections.

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