Non-Citizen Voting

New York City adopted a measure today that would permit legal permanent residents to vote in municipal elections, including for the mayoralty. Non-citizen voting was a fairly common practice in some states during the nineteenth century, though currently only a handful of cities allow this.

In any litigation challenging this New York City measure, the strongest authority against non-citizen voting will come from John Bingham. Bingham was adamant that the Constitution prohibited states from extending the franchise to non-citizens. He made this claim in opposition to the admission of Oregon and Minnesota as states because both at the time permitted some non citizens to vote. (In part, Bingham said that the requirement of citizenship to be elected to office implying that only citizens could vote.)

Of course, both states were admitted by Congress over Bingham's objections, which undercuts the force of his argument. And during the debate on the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, Bingham said nothing on the subject that I could find. Perhaps a challenge to the measure will reveal more