Non-citizen suffrage in the United States has been greatly reduced over time and historically has been a contentious issue.
Before 1926, as many as 40 states allowed non-citizens to vote in elections, usually with a residency requirement ranging from a few months to a few years.Xenophobia, Belonging and Agency: Citizenship in Immigrant America. By: Hayduk, Ron, García-Castañon, Marcela, New Political Science, 07393148, Jun2018, Vol. 40, Issue 2 While federal law does not prohibit noncitizens from voting in state or local elections, no state has allowed noncitizens to vote in statewide elections since Arkansas became the last state to outlaw noncitizen voting in state elections in 1926.
Since 1997, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 has prohibited non-citizens from voting in federal elections, with the threat of fines, imprisonment, inadmissibility and deportation. Exempt from punishment is any noncitizen who, at the time of voting, had two natural or adoptive U.S. citizen parents, who began permanently living in the United States before turning 16 years old, and who reasonably believed that they were a citizen of the United States.
As of December 2022, non-citizen voting is allowed for a handful of local elections, including in Winooski, Montpelier, and Burlington, Vermont in Vermont, and over a dozen cities in Maryland near Washington, D.C. In 2023, D.C. itself started allowing local non-citizen voting. Additionally, the U.S. territories of American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands allow non-citizen US nationals to vote, a status granted to all persons born in American Samoa.Register to Vote in the Northern Mariana Islands All persons born in the Northern Mariana Islands automatically become US citizens at birth, as opposed to becoming US nationals at birth. Guam and Hawaii, by contrast, do not allow non-citizen US nationals to vote. Turnout by non-citizens in many of these cities remains very low (sometimes less than 0.5% of voters), with some non-citizens expressing fear about the spotlight and backlash around how voting might hurt their application to become citizens.
Discussion In 2006, San Francisco State University political science professor and rights activist Ron Hayduk published a book entitled Democracy For All: Restoring Immigrant Voting Rights in the United States. The book presents additional elements of the historical and present reality of noncitizen voting rights in the United States.
U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin has argued that the blanket exclusion of noncitizens from the ballot is neither constitutionally required nor historically normal.
In 2017, journalist Joe Matthews called for universal suffrage in California.
Pre-1926 While initial research showed that 22 states or territories, including colonies before the Declaration of Independence, have at some time given at least some voting rights to non-citizens in some or all elections, more recent and in-depth studies uncovered evidence of 40 states providing suffrage for non-citizens at some point before 1926. For example, in 1875, the Supreme Court in Minor v. Happersett noted that "citizenship has not in all cases been made a condition precedent to the enjoyment of the right of suffrage. Thus, in Missouri, persons of foreign birth, who have declared their intention to become citizens of the United States, may under certain circumstances vote."
Anti-Irish Catholic sentiment and anti-German Catholic sentiment following the War of 1812 and intensifying again in the 1840s lead many states, particularly in the Northeast, to amend their constitutions to prohibit non-citizens from voting. States that banned non-citizen voting during this time included New Hampshire in 1814, Virginia in 1818, Connecticut in 1819, New Jersey in 1820, Massachusetts in 1822, Vermont in 1828, Pennsylvania in 1838, Delaware in 1831, Tennessee in 1834, Rhode Island in 1842, Illinois in 1848, Ohio and Maryland in 1851, and North Carolina in 1856.
By 1900, nearly half of the states and territories had some experience with voting by non-citizens, and for some the experience lasted more than half a century., citing At the turn of the twentieth century, anti-immigration feeling ran high, and Alabama stopped allowing non-citizens to vote by way of a constitutional change in 1901; Colorado followed suit in 1902, Wisconsin in 1908, and Oregon in 1914., citing Just as the nationalism unleashed by the War of 1812 helped to reverse the non-citizen suffrage policies inherited from the late eighteenth century, World War I caused a sweeping retreat from the progressive non-citizen suffrage policies of the late nineteenth century., citing In 1918, Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota all changed their constitutions to purge non-citizen suffrage, and Texas ended the practice of noncitizen voting in primary elections by statute. Indiana and Texas joined the trend in 1921, followed by Mississippi in 1924 and, finally, Arkansas in 1926., citing In 1931, political scientist Leon Aylsworth noted that "[f]or the first time in over a hundred years, a national election was held in 1928 in which no alien in any state had the right to cast a vote for a candidate for any office – national, state, or local.", citing
+ No citizenship requirement for suffrage State Years Citation Connecticut 1776–1819 Delaware 1776–1831 Illinois * Article 27 of the 1818 Illinois Constitution: "In all elections, all white male inhabitants above the age of 21 years, having resided in the state six months next preceding the election, shall enjoy the right of an elector" 1848: end of non-citizen suffrage by constitutional amendment, but noncitizens who were present in 1848 were grandfathered. Kentucky 1789–1799 Maryland 1776-1851 Massachusetts 1780-? 1780 Massachusetts Constitution:the entry Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (1780) on Wikisource is not the original 1780 text but the present-day amended text; for the original 1780 constitution, see: Article IV (Chapter I., Section III. House of Representatives) : "Every male person, being twenty-one years of age, and resident in any particular town in this Commonwealth for the space of one year next preceding, having a freehold estate within the same town, of the annual income of three pounds, or any estate of the value of sixty pounds, shall have a right to vote in the choice of a Representative or Representatives for the said town." Article II (Chapter I, Section II. Senate): "every male inhabitant of twenty-one years of age and upwards, having a freehold estate within the Commonwealth, of the annual income of three pounds, or any estate of the value of sixty pounds, shall have a right to give in his vote for the Senators for the district of which he is an inhabitant. And to remove all doubts concerning the meaning of the word "inhabitant" in this constitution, every person shall be considered as an inhabitant, for the purpose of electing and being elected into any office, or place within this State, in that town, district, or plantation, where he dwelleth, or hath his home." New Hampshire 1792–1814 New Jersey 1776–1820 New York 1776–1804 1777 New York State Constitution, Article VII: "[E]very male inhabitant of full age, who shall have personally resided within one of the counties of this State for six months immediately preceding the day of election, shall, at such election, be entitled to vote for representatives of the said county in assembly; if, during the time aforesaid, he shall have been a freeholder, possessing a freehold of the value of twenty pounds, within the said county, or have rented a tenement therein of the yearly value of forty shillings, and been rated and actually paid taxes to this State: Provided always, That every person who now is a freeman of the city of Albany, or who was made a freeman of the city of New York on or before the fourteenth day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, and shall be actually and usually resident in the said cities, respectively, shall be entitled to vote for representatives in assembly within his said place of residence."Constitution of New York – 1777. Historical Society of the New York Courts. North Carolina 1704–1856 Northwest Territory 1787-1803 1787 Northwest Ordinance (valid until 1803) "Provided, That no person be eligible or qualified to act as a representative unless he shall have been a citizen of one of the United States three years, and be a resident in the district, or unless he shall have resided in the district three years; and, in either case, shall likewise hold in his own right, in fee simple, two hundred acres of land within the same; Provided, also, That a freehold in of land in the district, having been a citizen of one of the states, and being resident in the district, or the like freehold and two years residence in the district, shall be necessary to qualify a man as an elector of a representative." Ohio 1802-1851 1802 Constitution: "In all elections, all white male inhabitants above the age of twenty-one years, having resided in the State one year next preceding the election, and who have paid or are charged with a State or county tax, shall enjoy the right of an elector" 1851: end of non-citizen voting rights Pennsylvania 1776-1874 1776 Constitution: "all free men having a sufficient evident common interest with, and attachment to the community, have a right to elect officers, or to be elected into office" 1790 Constitution (Art. III section 1.): "In elections by the citizens, every freeman of the age of twenty-one years, having resided in the State two years next before the election, and within that time paid a State or county tax, which shall have been assessed at least six months before the election, shall enjoy the rights of an elector: Provided, That the sons of persons qualified asaforesaid, between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-two years, shall be entitled to vote, although they shall not have paid taxes." 1838 Constitution (Art. III, section 1.): "In elections by the citizens, every white freeman of the age of twenty-one years, having resided in this State one year, and in the election-district where he offers to vote ten days immediately preceding such election, and within two years paid a State or county tax, which shall have been assessed at least ten days before the election, shall enjoy the rights of an elector. ..." 1874 Constitution (Article VIII, section 1.): "Every male citizen twenty-one years of age, possessing the following qualifications, shall be entitled to vote at all elections: First—He shall have been a citizen of the United States at least one month. ..." Rhode Island 1762–1842 South Carolina 1790–? Tennessee 1796–1834 Vermont 1776-1828 1776 and 1786 Constitutions: "all freemen. having a sufficient, evident, common interest with, and attachment to the community, have a right to elect officers, or be elected into office." 1793 Constitution (Section 21st): "Every man of the full age of twenty one years, having resided in this State for the space of one whole year next before the election of Representatives, and is of a quiet and peaceable behaviour, and will take the following oath or affirmation, shall be entitled to all the privileges of a freeman of this State. "You solemnly swear (or affirm) that whenever you give your vote or suffrage, touching any matter that concerns the State of Vermont, you will do it so as in your conscience you shall judge will most conduce to the best good of the same, as established by the constitution, without fear or favour of any man." " 1828: end of non-citizen suffrage for federal elections; but still up to 1977 for local elections. Virginia 1776-1850 1776 Virginia Bill of Rights: "all men, having sufficient evidence of permanent common interest with, and attachment to, the community, have the right of suffrage" 1850: end of non-citizen voting rights