This is very interesting. Despite the first requirement to vote in election in the US being a US CITIZEN, various states are granting voting rights to non-citizens.


http://www.immigrantvoting.org/

VOTING RIGHTS RESTORATION ACT REINTRODUCTION

New York City Council Members Charles Barron and Kendall Stewart, along with several of their colleagues, re-introduced the historic Voting Rights Restoration Act, now known as Intro 245, on April 5, 2006. This landmark piece of civil rights and government reform legislation would allow noncitizen residents 18 years of age or older to vote in New York City elections if they have been lawfully present for six months.

New York City Council Member Charles Barron speaks at a press conference on the steps of City Hall before the November 14 hearings on the Voting Rights Restoration Act (Intro 62. Visit the PHOTO GALLERY for more pictures of democracy in action.

More than one million tax-paying New Yorkers have been disenfranchised in their local community because of their citizenship status. At least 15% of the residents of most New York City Council districts are non-citizens, with that percentage above 35% in the populations of several districts.


NEW YORK CITY'S IMMIGRANT VOTERS

New York City immigrants are not firmly aligned with any one political party, see schools as their top priority, and received little campaign attention from major political parties and labor unions, according to a new exit poll of New York city's naturalized immigrants who voted in the November 2005 municipal elections. The 2005 New Americans Exit Poll was conducted by Professor Lorraine Minnite of Barnard College and by The New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), with financial support from El Diario newspaper.

Unlike most American-born voters, these immigrant voters turned out in the same proportions for local elections as they do for federal and state elections. “The very large number and consistency of the City’s immigrant voters means that their political power will continue to grow, and that is great news for New York’s working families, who want to see more and faster progress on issues like school reform and affordable health care and housing,” said Chung-Wha Hong, executive director of the NYIC.

Poll results are available online at http://www.thenyic.org/.

________________________


LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
IN IMMIGRANT VOTING RIGHTS

Efforts to reinstate voting rights for noncitizen residents --which were widespread in 40 states and federal territories until the demise of the practice in the 1920s-- kicked into high gear in 2005. Legislation has been re-introduced in Massachusetts, where several local communities are seeking home rule authorization from the state legislature and Minnesota, a state with a long history of nonresident voting rights which seeks to amend the state constitution to restore those rights (along with voting rights for ex-offenders). New York City introduced legislation April 20 and City Council committee hearings were held November 14. (The bill was re-introduced in April 2006.)

Other contemporary efforts include California (where San Francisco's November 2004 ballot included Proposition F to allow all residents to vote in school board elections), Connecticut, Illinois (which has allowed noncitizen voting in school board elections since 199, Maine, Maryland (where six communities allow noncitizen voting and additional campaigns are underway), North Carolina, Texas, Washington DC (where a bill was introduced to City Council in July 2003 to allow legal permanent residents to vote), and Wisconsin.