Non-citizens are gaining voting rights and some folks couldn’t be happier

Joshua A. Douglas at the Washington Post has some great news for people who think that pesky questions about things like your citizenship status shouldn’t be an impediment to voting. Help is on the way! After burning through a paragraph or two talking about how there’s no need for a voter fraud commission because, well… that’s just silly, he gets down to the uplifting stories of communities who have decided to allow legal non-citizens to vote.

In November, San Francisco voters approved Proposition N, which grants the right to vote in school board elections to noncitizen parents and guardians living in the city. The noncitizen voters must be at least 18 years old and cannot be in prison or on parole for a felony conviction. The law goes into effect for the November 2018 school board election.

The theory behind expanded voting rights for noncitizens is to enfranchise people who have a direct stake in school policies. As San Francisco Assemblyman David Chiu (D) — himself the son of immigrants — explained: “One out of three kids in the San Francisco unified school system has a parent who is an immigrant, who is disenfranchised and doesn’t have a voice. We’ve had legal immigrants who’ve had children go through the entire K-12 system without having a say.”

The fact that this is coming out of San Francisco will come as absolutely no surprise to regular readers. They seem to be holding a contest these days to figure out who can come up with the next, most outrageous proposal to thumb their nose at immigration law, even if this doesn’t fit neatly into that basket. It’s important to note that the San Francisco plan, at least nor now, it talking about non-citizens who are the country legally. (e.g. green card holders.)

And it’s also important to point out that they’re only talking about municipal elections, not congressional races or votes for the presidency. When it comes to things like school board elections (which are actually very important) it’s really up to the community rather than the federal government. It sounds like a terrible precedent to set to me, but I don’t live there. Voting – at any level – is one of those precious privileges which should inspire you to work hard and obtain your citizenship.

But before we write off this idea as completely harmless, other locations have already enacted or are preparing to enact measures which would absolutely allow illegal aliens to vote. One of those is a suburb of Baltimore, Maryland. (Fox News)

A D.C. suburb in Maryland is considering a plan that would give undocumented immigrants the right to vote, making their city the largest in the Old Line State to do so.

The city, which is home of the University of Maryland’s main campus and nearly 30,000 residents, is weighing approval of the new measure to let noncitizens cast ballots for mayor and City Council, The Baltimore Sun reported Sunday.

Supporters of the measure say that local elections focus on issues like trash collection, and other municipal services and they are issues that affect residents of the city, regardless of their citizenship status.

The proposal in Maryland deliberately avoids making any reference to the legal status of the immigrant and that’s by their own admission. One prominent supporter and former City Council member said, “We very intentionally made it so that we did not have questions about citizenship status. It undermines the premise of noncitizen voting to try to draw a distinction.”

No, what it undermines is the rule of law because there’s a massive distinction between people in the country legally using green cards or visas and those who are illegal aliens. And allowing the latter group to vote devalues the entire system. But hey, Maryland… you do you, as the kids say. I suppose as long as you’re making headlines with your efforts to #RESIST then all’s well that ends well.