A court has struck down San Francisco's law allowing non-citizens to vote.
Voting is a right reserved for U.S. citizens.

It's amazing this needed to be said.

On 2022-07-30 2:03 AM, BTR1701 wrote:
> A court has struck down San Francisco's law allowing non-citizens to vote.
> Voting is a right reserved for U.S. citizens.
>
> It's amazing this needed to be said.

What on earth is the incentive for acquiring US citizenship if mere
residents can do anything a citizen can without needing to study for any
exam?

I know that residents can't do everything a citizen can do *yet* but the
"progressives" seem to be making a concerted effort in that direction.
Unfortunately for them, the courts seem to be thwarting their plans.

--
Rhino

BTR1701 <no_email@invalid.invalid> wrote:

>A court has struck down San Francisco's law allowing non-citizens to vote.
>Voting is a right reserved for U.S. citizens.

>It's amazing this needed to be said.

It did need to be said. You made me look it up.

According to this,

https://ballotpedia.org/Laws_permitting_noncitizens_to_vote_in_the_United_States

federal law didn't prohibit it until 1996. I had no idea.

Federal law allows the possibility that a state constitution might
authorize an alien (use the statutory language!) to vote. In that case,
federal law prohibits voting for federal candidates only. There is a
series of exceptions.

The only thing the statute addresses specific to Washington DC is
Delegate (member of the House of Representative but cannot vote on the
House floor, just in committee) but not municipal/district elections.
Washington has so little home rule that their local election code may
have been passed by Congress and not the municipal government.

I don't see that the federal constitution prohibits this and the
elections clause leaves it to the states.

It wouldn't violate the federal constitution if not prohibited in a
state's constitution and authorized in the state's election code.

It also cites a law article written by a professor that 14 states --
including California and my state but not New York -- that don't have
clear impediments to a municipality expanding voting rights in local
elections under home rule.

The judge was not influenced by this article.

Immigrants can vote in local school council elections in Chicago. These
elections are not held under the election code but the school code. As
the school district is a special district (special districts never have
home rule) this isn't a home rule issue.

On Sat, 30 Jul 2022 09:14:01 -0400, Rhino
<no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:

>What on earth is the incentive for acquiring US citizenship if mere
>residents can do anything a citizen can without needing to study for any
>exam?
>
>I know that residents can't do everything a citizen can do *yet* but the
>"progressives" seem to be making a concerted effort in that direction.
>Unfortunately for them, the courts seem to be thwarting their plans.

And of course it is FAR easier for non-citizens to evade taxes -
there's one census tract in our metro area where the census gives
average income (based on tax returns) is in the lowest 5% while the
average house there is $2 million +.

What this area DOES have is a lot of "astronaut" families where the
mother and kids are immigrants while dad (who holds a green card
allowing him to enter the country any time) lives and works offshore
and violates the provisions in the Canadian green card system
requiring him to report (and pay) on his worldwide working income as a
condition of retaining his green card..... which of course means wife
+ kids get free access to social services (schools, medical system,
local facilities) without contributing a nickel to them. Guess which
country (commonly known by its 3 initials) most of these folks come
from.

Time to put them on a show boat to ....