Terms of Engagement – Should Noncitizens Be Allowed to Vote in the U.S.?

Archon Fung (00:32):
Hey everyone, this is Terms of Engagement. I’m Archon Fung, a faculty member at the Harvard Kennedy School, and Director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.

Stephen Richer (00:42):
And I’m Stephen Richer. I’m the former elected Maricopa County Recorder, and I’m now a lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School and a fellow at the Ash Center.

Archon Fung (00:50):
We’re recording this show live, so if you’d like to join the conversation on watching live, please put your thoughts in the chat in YouTube, or LinkedIn, or Stephen’s simulcast X broadcast.

Stephen Richer (01:04):
Those are where the best comments live there, undoubtedly. The smartest followers that one could possibly have. So Archon and I, as always, are speaking on behalf of ourselves and only on behalf of ourselves, not on behalf of any Harvard University-related entity.

(01:20):
It is one week away from election day. Lots of excitement, lots of speculation about what the federal results are going to be, but also who’s going to control state legislatures? Are governors’ offices going to flip? Are they going to stay the same? Lots of questions. Over 20 million Americans have already voted. As I’ve mentioned before on this show, the nature of election day has materially changed over the last 20 years in that now approximately one third of Americans vote by mail, approximately one third of Americans vote in person but before election day. Then that means the remaining one third that vote are voting in person on election day.

(02:02):
Now, those numbers might be a little bit different from what they were in November 2024, just given all the conversation that’s been happening around, especially mail balloting, but that’s what they were in November 2024, and so far so good. Now, one of the conversations that is happening concurrent with the administration of the election is are non-citizens voting in American elections? This has been a centerpiece of the president’s agenda on election administration and has consistently been one of the claims that he has made alleging that there is wrongdoing in American elections.

(02:41):
Right now, the Justice Department is in suit with the state of California alleging that approximately 20,000 non-citizens are on the voter rolls, and it wants the state of California to segregate out those mail ballots even though the registrants associated with those mail ballots are all people who have attested under penalty of law that they are United States citizens, which is the requirement to register in California and under federal law. But we’re going to be stepping back a little bit from that debate and asking instead, should non-citizens be able to vote in the United States? If they pay taxes, if they own property, do they have “a stake in the game” and should they be able to vote in that game? What’s the landscape of non-citizens voting right now? What’s the historic landscape have non-citizens voted in the United States in the past? And then, how does this compare to countries throughout the world?

(03:44):
So to do that, we have a fantastic guest because the historic perspective and the broader perspective is not one that I know much about. And so, I’m excited to bring them on and Archon’s going to introduce him.

Archon Fung (03:55):
Great. Hey, before I do that, the PSA here is everybody listening to the show should go vote early perhaps, but not often. Just vote once. Then also, Tuesday’s a big day, a week from today. Election day is a big day for Terms of Engagement. A week from today, Stephen and I will be talking about the elections, both the races, but especially about election administration issues and whether some of the problems that people are worried about are showing up.

(04:27):
Then we will announce this on social media and on the Ash Center website, but we’re trying to get organized to do a little bit of an election live cast late on Tuesday night, maybe 10:00 to 11:00 p.m. or something like that Eastern. We’ll do it from the Institute of Politics, where at the Kennedy School during every election they have a watch party. So we’ll try to have a little bit of a festive environment for that.

Stephen Richer (04:51):
So let us know in the comments if that’s something that you’d like to be part of and like to join and then we’ll assess the consumer demand for it, and then we’ll see what we can do on election day.

Archon Fung (05:01):
Right, because we try to give the people what they want always. Without further ado, our guest today to talk about the possibility and the reality of non-citizen voting is Ron Hayduk. He teaches courses about American politics, immigration, inequality, political participation, and social movements at San Francisco State University. He’s written a lot of books including Untangling the Roots of Immigration and Inequality, Immigrant Crossroads, and Democracy for All: Restoring Immigrant Voting Rights in the United States.

(05:36):
He’s formerly a social worker. He worked in the government in New York City, consulted to policy organizations such as DMOS, the NAACP, and the Aspen Institute, and he served as an expert witness in court cases. He obtained his PhD from City University of New York and has taught many places, including Queens College and the Borough Manhattan Community College before coming to San Francisco State University in 2016.

(06:05):
Welcome, Ron.

Ron Hayduk (06:08):
Thank you so much for having me. I really look forward to the conversation.

Archon Fung (06:11):
Great, great.

Stephen Richer (06:12):
Go ahead.

Archon Fung (06:14):
Yeah, so why don’t we open it up? It’s a really good time to have this conversation because the two sides of the debate about immigrant or non-citizen voting are heating up. As Stephen said in the intro, there’s lots of concerns about non-citizen and illegal voting on one side, even court cases or at least DOJ investigations and other efforts to clamp down on allegations of non-citizen and illegal voting. But on the other side, you write that for much of American history, non-citizens have been able to vote at the local state and even federal levels.

(06:57):
So describe the landscape. What is the landscape on both sides? Maybe start with the anti-side, the movement against non-citizen voting, and how’s that shaping up?

Ron Hayduk (07:12):
Sure. Maybe I could start with how I came to learn about this curious topic-

Archon Fung (07:20):
Sure.

Ron Hayduk (07:20):
… and maybe it might set some context in my approach to it, and then I can circle back to these crucial questions. I first learned about immigrant voting when I was the director of a small New York City agency called the Voter Assistance Commission back in 1993. It was a nonpartisan city charter mandated agency mandated to facilitate voter participation of underrepresented groups. One of my first tasks was to get parents to vote in school board elections.

(07:54):
Any parent of a child in the schools could vote in the community school board elections in New York City at this time, which included non-citizens. I had never heard of such a thing, even as a graduate student studying electoral history, but there I was working with the Board of Elections and the Board of Education in New York City to get all parents registered to vote and turned out. I’m proud to say we actually helped increase turnout that year, but those same 200,000 immigrant parents couldn’t vote in the general election that same year in 1993 when Rudolph Giuliani defeated David Dinkins by 50,000 votes out of almost two million votes cast.

(08:42):
This is when the Giuliani administration was alleging that the election system was open to fraud, was alleging that non-citizens were on the rolls or people that were not eligible, and was really pressing the Board of Elections to be restrictive about how they tally the votes. They actually sent poll watchers to polling sites in minority neighborhoods, which we see on display today. I was shaken by all of these developments. It was the same year, 1993, when Tacoma Park, Maryland, restored voting rights to immigrants in local elections there. It was front page news on the Washington Post and sort of put it on the political map.

(09:37):
This was the same year, 1993, when the National Voter Registration Act was enacted, otherwise known as Motor Voter. Opponents at the time worried that the NVRA would open the doors to vote fraud, including and especially by non-citizens. Of course, as I think you’ve discussed on the show, the incidences of vote fraud are infinitesimal and it’s really not a significant problem despite the allegations that it is widespread. All of these events sort of cemented my interest and research into this curious and fascinating topic of immigrant voting, and these related questions about vote fraud or how should we balance election integrity with access, how should we practice democracy?

Stephen Richer (10:32):
Bring us up to speed with the legal landscape today. Currently, in all 50 states, it’s unlawful to register to vote in statewide or federal elections if you are not a citizen of the United States. You cannot vote in any state for a federal election or for a statewide contest if you are not a citizen, but there are some municipalities where you can register and you can vote. Is that right?

Ron Hayduk (10:59):
Yes. There are 22 local municipalities where you can register and vote as a non-citizen in local elections.

Stephen Richer (11:09):
What’s the biggest of those?

Ron Hayduk (11:11):
Washington DC, but there’s also 16 municipalities.

Archon Fung (11:16):
The whole district allows non-citizens to vote for local-

Ron Hayduk (11:19):
Exactly.

Archon Fung (11:20):
Only school board or up to mayor?

Ron Hayduk (11:22):
No, for all local elections and it’s any immigrant, including the undocumented, which is unlike-

Stephen Richer (11:31):
Oh.

Archon Fung (11:32):
Oh, wow.

Ron Hayduk (11:32):
… Vermont, which has three municipalities, it’s three largest cities in Vermont that allow immigrants to vote in local elections, but only those with legal status, legal permanent residence or work permit. Maryland has 16 municipalities that allow immigrants to vote in local elections. And there, most of those jurisdictions allow any immigrant documented and undocumented. San Francisco allows immigrants to vote in local elections in only school board elections.

Archon Fung (12:07):
Only school board. Yeah.

Stephen Richer (12:07):
Okay.

Ron Hayduk (12:08):
So you can see that these municipalities span a big chunk of different parts of the United States, but also they contemplate different kinds of immigrants that could vote and whether they’re all local elections or just school board elections.

Archon Fung (12:25):
Can I ask a technical… I mean, this is kind of down in the weeds a little bit, but so say I’m in DC. Right now, in a week… I didn’t vote early unlike Stephen because I don’t really plan ahead, so I’m going to show up on Tuesday, plus I like going to the gym at the elementary school, to cast my ballot and the federal races will be on there as well as the state level and local races, including the nine ballot measures, which I’m still trying to wrap my mind around. But if I show up in a DC election and I’m a non-citizen, will I get that same ballot? And won’t there be a danger that I’ll just fill in all the dots because I don’t understand that I’m only eligible to vote in the local election?

Stephen Richer (13:08):
Yeah, this is a great question. Just logistically, the voter in Vermont who shows up in Burlington, which I think is one of the states, do they create a different ballot that only has the municipal candidates on it?

Ron Hayduk (13:20):
Correct. They have a separate voter registration form that’s locally generated voter registration form for only those people who are eligible to vote in local elections.

Archon Fung (13:30):
I see. So they thought about my problem of am I inadvertently-

Ron Hayduk (13:35):
They had to.

Archon Fung (13:35):
… vote illegally? Yeah.

Stephen Richer (13:37):
So that is an administrative encumbrance then because in Arizona, for instance, those who do not provide documented proof of citizenship, which is the vast minority of registered voters, they can only vote in federal races. And so, we have what’s called a federal-only ballot that has the president, US Senate and US House member, but it doesn’t have any of the state and local contests. Just having that bifurcated ballot system means that you have to create more ballot styles, which as the jurisdiction gets bigger and bigger is more and more cumbersome. So I would imagine for a city like San Francisco, that’s a little bit of a process.

Archon Fung (14:16):
Yeah. Interesting. Yeah.

Stephen Richer (14:18):
So tell us historically, again, current framework, can’t vote in statewide contests, can’t vote in federal contests. Have non-citizens ever been able to vote in those contests in the history of the United States?

Ron Hayduk (14:33):
Yes. I was very surprised to learn, as is most Americans when they learn, that voting by non-citizens lawfully, legally is older than our national pastime baseball where there’s a World Series going on, and was widely practiced in the United States. 40 states, before we even had 50 states, at some point in time between 1776 and 1926 allowed immigrants to vote, not just in local elections, which is what’s happening now, but also state and federal elections. And immigrants could run and hold office. This is as American as apple pie in some ways you can think of.

Stephen Richer (15:18):
When and why did that start to change? When and why?

Ron Hayduk (15:22):
Well, let’s talk about why it even happened, and maybe that’ll help explain why it changed. Historically, voting rights were not tied to citizenship. The eligibility requirements that mattered, of course, were class, race, and gender. It was only white men with property that could initially vote. By limiting the franchise, of course, to white men with property, the founders made alien suffrage compatible with the exclusion of African Americans, women, men without property contributing to their marginalization. But the logic was, and this was in 11 of the 13 original states allowed immigrants to vote, the logic was these are legitimate stakeholders. They’re members of the community that should have a say in the policies that affect them.

(16:18):
So alien suffrage, as it was called then, was seen as a pathway to citizenship, not a substitute for citizenship. When Congress enacted legislation to create new territories, the Northwest Ordinance and others, it provided voting rights along with access to land to lure immigrants to settle these new territories. And it worked. It helped facilitate voter participation of millions of Europeans and promoted their eventual citizenship. It helped foster their ties to their new place to develop connections and create a new home. And in so doing, immigrants who were sizable in many of these places helped inject salient issues into public debate affecting party dynamics and factoring into electoral outcomes.

(17:13):
But it was rolled back in phases, and even early on. Some of the early opposition to immigrant voting arose when the Federalists came into power and enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts in some ways because they were afraid that the French radicals coming from the French Revolution would infect the American people with radical ideas. The War of 1812, when the White House was sacked and burnt, spurred fear of foreign enemies that led to the repeal of immigrant voting in some states, including Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware. But the 1840s and 1850s when large numbers of Irish, German, Chinese came, the know nothing party, nativism, really arose and that led to a number of states repealing immigrant voting rights.

(18:15):
Immigrant voting-

Stephen Richer (18:16):
Yeah.

Ron Hayduk (18:16):
Sorry. I was going to just say that, just let me add that immigrant voting was opposed by Southern states because immigrants were largely opposed to slavery. Then I can explain how it expanded after the Civil War, which is when it was most widely practiced in most of the country.

Archon Fung (18:35):
So it’s kind of a rubber band. It goes back and forth.

Ron Hayduk (18:37):
Exactly. Yes.

Archon Fung (18:38):
Earlier on, I imagine part of the reason to favor alien voting, I guess the term was, is you just wanted more people in the United States and you wanted the electorate to expand, not shrink. And then of course you have these nativist concerns and concerns about foreign interference.

Ron Hayduk (19:01):
Yes. I think it’s important to note that immigrant voting did facilitate the inclusion of European immigrants, but it did so by the displacement and genocide of Native Americans. I mean, that’s sort of how that all went. But it did, of course, bar and helped justify other exclusions. There were proposals for African Americans and women to get the vote prior to this. The Supreme Court decision, Minor versus Happersett in 1872, affirmed the right for states to allow immigrants to vote at the same time that it limited and barred access to women from the franchise. So it kind of worked in ways that buttressed these sorts of exclusions and privileged Europeans and men.

(20:02):
This expanded after the Civil War when the Reconstruction restored voting rights to immigrants in the South. Many of the states in the Midwest allowed immigrant voting. It was most widely practiced from the 1870s and 1880s. But during the 1890s and 1900s when larger numbers of Southern and Eastern Europeans who ironically were not universally seen as white in the taxonomy of the day, and when immigrants were participating in significant social movements like labor movements, and the populist movement, and socialist movements, this is the period of time, of course, when there’s wrenching economic and social changes happening in the United States during rapid industrialization and urbanization of the country. But immigrants factored in these elections.

(21:01):
In some states, immigrants were 10 to 25% of the population in states. In some locales, whole counties were 30 to 40% foreign born. So parties and candidates had to be responsive to these folks who were mobilized and active in the electorate. As the nativism surged in the turn of the 20th century, and especially during World War I, immigrant voting was repealed state by state, eliminating it ultimately in Arkansas in 1926.

Stephen Richer (21:35):
All right. I’ve got to get in because I need to clean up the record a little bit here.

Ron Hayduk (21:38):
Okay.

Stephen Richer (21:40):
One reminder that if you have a question, you can put it in the comment box and we’d love to integrate it in. One cleaning up the record is there’s not a World Series going on. Nobody’s watching Milwaukee versus Tampa Bay, three zero anyway. So if nobody watches the World Series-

Archon Fung (21:57):
Does it happen?

Stephen Richer (21:59):
Another important sort of cleanup item is I’m still worried about French radicals coming to the country. That is not just a French Revolution type thing. The two more serious comments are one, I find it very interesting that it was such an inducement to move to the United States that you would be able to participate in the voting process. I don’t know if that’s as much of an inducement these days. Then the question that I wanted to clarify is it is not against the United States Constitution to allow non-citizens to vote in American elections.

(22:34):
For instance, a state could decide, correct me if I’m wrong, that it wants non-citizens to be able to vote in all of its races. Is that right?

Ron Hayduk (22:43):
Yes. Joshua Douglas has written extensively about constitutions and the federal and the state constitutions, and you can get chapter and verse about what those laws are. But you’re correct. The courts have upheld the right for states to enfranchise non-citizens, but there has been an effort to ban the possibility of immigrant voting in 18 states now, starting in 2019. There’s been a concerted effort by conservative groups and Republican Party allies to ban the possibility of immigrant voting have had a number of ballot measures that voters were able to vote on, some constitutional amendments.

(23:28):
So it’s true that the courts and the federal government doesn’t… Well, courts have said that. The federal government has changed its law in 1996 banning immigrants from voting in federal elections, so that’s no longer a possibility since 1996. Many states-

Archon Fung (23:46):
Wait, that was Congress or-

Ron Hayduk (23:48):
Congress.

Archon Fung (23:51):
Congress. I see. I see.

Stephen Richer (23:52):
Right. So it is not unconstitutional, but it is against federal statute-

Ron Hayduk (23:58):
Exactly.

Stephen Richer (23:58):
… to allow a non-citizen to vote in a federal election. But there’s still nothing stopping in federal law or the United States Constitution, a state from allowing non-citizens to vote for governor, say.

Ron Hayduk (24:12):
Correct. Unless you’re in one of those 18 states that has banned the possibility of restoring-

Stephen Richer (24:18):
But that’s state law.

Archon Fung (24:18):
Yeah, that’s state law. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Ron Hayduk (24:19):
Right. Right.

Archon Fung (24:21):
I don’t know if you know the count, Ron, but I think maybe that proposal is up in four or six states in the midterms. Is that right? An additional force-

Ron Hayduk (24:29):
I believe that’s right.

Archon Fung (24:29):
Yeah.

Ron Hayduk (24:29):
I think it’s going to form-

Archon Fung (24:33):
Are going to ban… Yeah. Or it’s a question about whether people will vote to ban non-citizen voting in their state.

Ron Hayduk (24:39):
Right. There’s state ballot measures, and they are some of the same groups that are behind those ballot measures. Of course, during this period of time, there’s fewer localities or states that are broaching the question about restoring voting rights to immigrants in local elections. I always like to emphasize this business of restoring because it was widely practiced, as we’ve talked about.

Stephen Richer (25:04):
If you were in one of those states and you were trying to make the most compelling case for allowing non-citizens to vote, or at least the possibility that in the future non-citizens will be able to vote, what’s the compelling argument for why non-citizens should be able to vote?

Ron Hayduk (25:21):
Well, I think it boils down to basic democratic principles of no taxation without representation, and only just governments rest on the consent of the governed, and that immigrants are a sizable portion of the population. 25 million people in the United States are legal permanent residents or have lawful status, and there’s about 12 million, 13 million that are undocumented. These folks, of course, work in every sector of the economy. They send their kids to school, they own businesses, they fight and die in the military, and they have a stake in the laws and policies that govern them.

(26:12):
They’re not a random portion of the population. They are the targets of lots of activity these days, including immigration and customs enforcement. The other parts of this are that immigrants as a group, they’re highly heterogeneous, but as a group, immigrants score low on many of the indicators of wellbeing, including income and wealth, healthcare, education, and criminal justice. And so, they argue that these conditions are the byproducts of immigrant political inclusion. Just like previously excluded groups, their marginalization was in part a byproduct of immigrant political inclusion.

(27:06):
That’s why they fought for voting rights. The vote is the tried and true mechanism that keeps representatives responsive to those constituents and accountable to all residents.

Stephen Richer (27:17):
Archon, where are you on this?

Archon Fung (27:19):
Yeah.

Stephen Richer (27:19):
Where are you on this? Is that compelling? Do you find that convincing?

Archon Fung (27:23):
Well, I am with Ron, but I want to highlight what the principle differences, at least from a political theorist or democratic theorist position on either side. I think the mainstream position, if you were to project it onto this question of non-citizen voting in democratic theory is the justification that only citizens should vote is that’s the set of people that’s made a permanent commitment to this community, the United States, or Texas, or Massachusetts or ,whatever. And so, it’s that community of people that’s made an avowed permanent commitment to live their lives here and probably the next generations, that’s why they should vote. That’s the proper scope of the franchise.

(28:11):
That’s the argument for just citizens voting and no non-citizen voting. I’m maybe not where Ron is. I’m kind of in the middle position. My go-to democratic principle is different. It’s the idea that you should have a say to the extent that your interests are affected. And so, if you’re a non-citizen, but you’ve been living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for 20 years, you have a family here, all of those laws affect you deeply just as much as they affect me being a citizen. And so, the logic is of affectedness. We’re affected by these laws and by representation. So since we’re equally affected, we should get a voice.

(28:55):
But if I’m an immigrant that’s been here for a few months and I’m here for economic reasons, maybe I want a job and I’m working, and I do pay taxes, but I might leave, I might go back home in a month or two or a year or two, I’m okay with less voice for that person because they haven’t made this permanent commitment. For me, it’s kind of a sliding scale.

Ron Hayduk (29:22):
Historically, that was the way that it worked. You had to declare your intent, file first papers that made you eligible for voting. That’s certainly something that the opponents to immigrant voting say, “Listen, if immigrants want to vote, there’s a path for them to do that. Become a citizen. Show your loyalty and your attachment and become a citizen.” The problem is, of course, the average time it takes to become a citizen is seven years or longer, and for many immigrants who are here on lawful legal status, they’re not even eligible to become citizens, people with work permits or student visas. Unlike earlier times when basically if you’re a European immigrant, you came and you were on the pathway to citizenship and it was fast, easy, and cheap.

(30:10):
The other piece of it, I agree with you about the all affected interest principle. I think that’s the reason why it resonates in many localities is because folks have common interests in where the potholes get fixed, and safe streets, and good schools, and the whole bit.

Archon Fung (30:27):
Good schools, yeah.

Ron Hayduk (30:28):
But this business of you need time, I moved from New York City here to San Francisco in the fall of 2016. I could register and vote in 25 days. I didn’t know anything about any of the candidates. I had no attachment to the place, but because of my citizenship, I was-

Stephen Richer (30:47):
Also, isn’t that the problem? If we take Archon’s measurement or a test, which is, do you have stake in this community? Do you have an interest in this community? Well, then how the heck are we going to measure that? Is it based off of how many children that you have who are born in that community? Is it based off of how much property you own in that community, which is obviously a route we’ve gone down before that I don’t think Archon would sign back up to.

Archon Fung (31:15):
No.

Stephen Richer (31:15):
And so, otherwise it’s like how many social clubs do you go? I guess I struggle with that. Then the other question I have returned to a few times while you guys have been speaking is what special rights do we confer on being a citizen of the United States, if not this one? Because if you’re a non-citizen and you can own a gun, if you’re a non-citizen and you can start a business, if you’re a non-citizen and you have freedom of speech protections, you’re a non-citizen and you can vote, then what’s all that crying-

Archon Fung (31:48):
Why be a citizen?

Stephen Richer (31:51):
… about being a United States citizen other than you get a cool passport?

Archon Fung (31:53):
Yeah.

Ron Hayduk (31:54):
Well, and that is one of the objections that opponents raise is that it dilutes the value of citizenship and it reduces incentives for people to naturalize. Opponents argue that citizenship is valuable, and allowing voting before citizenship would erase those important distinctions, would cheapen citizenship, and reduce incentives. Advocates of immigrant voting rights argue instead, of course, that instead of diluting citizenship, it actually enriches citizenship. It encourages all residents to participate in the political life of their community and cities.

(32:31):
Rather than undermining democracy, it affirms the voices of all residents and produces more democratic political outcomes and better public policy. They contend that it doesn’t reduce incentives to naturalize because there’s a dozen rights and privileges you get by becoming a citizen. One is voting rights, other rights about benefits, and jobs, and traveling, petitioning relatives and so forth are very important to folks. We’re talking primarily about voting at the local level, not the federal level, which is precluded. That leaves plenty of incentives to naturalize.

Archon Fung (33:05):
Yeah. I wanted to go back a little bit comparing the history of the politics of voting to the current moment. When you were telling the story about the expansion and the contraction of non-citizen voting, what I heard, it was a very political story. It’s like, are these people having the franchise going to be good or bad for us? And so, I can totally understand if you’re a politician or a political party, why you’d want to expand or contract for those reasons. But now for these 18… Is it 18 states that have forbid it?

(33:41):
And then a large number of those quite recently, it doesn’t seem like a politically realist argument because most of those states didn’t have non-citizen voting to any extent, and to the extent that people were considering it, it was at the very local level. So it seems like more a symbolic politics than a realist politics of controlling the size of the electorate so that you will be more likely to win an election.

(34:08):
Is the character of politics and arguments against non-citizen voting different now than it was in those prior eras, do you think?

Ron Hayduk (34:20):
That’s an interesting question. I think it varies from locale to locale, is maybe the short, squirmy answer here. Think of how it’s actually practiced, how it actually worked in different places. In New York City when I was there, immigrant parents mobilized in some districts where the schools were overcrowded, they had out-of-date school books, they didn’t have bilingual education, they didn’t have enough seats in the room for all the students.

(34:52):
And so, they mobilized to win those seats in the community school board elections. They successfully advocated for and got changes including bilingual education. They prevailed on the city to build more schools, and a host of ways that actually improve the conditions of the school and student outcomes. It wasn’t just like the immigrant parents, the Dominicans, that mobilized to do this in Washington Heights. It was all the other parents, the older stock Irish, German, Italian, Jews, African Americans, Puerto Ricans, that they all benefited.

(35:35):
They supported immigrant voting rights because they saw the benefits and the community engagement. This was true, immigrants voted in sizable numbers in Tacoma Park when it was first established, ironically even in higher numbers in some cases than did their citizen neighbors in some districts. And that led to some changes. Here in San Francisco, there’s less turnout, but folks feel like their voices are affirmed. We’ve talked to people, done interviews, and focus groups, and talked to folks. They say they feel like the government cares about them, the local government.

(36:16):
Even if the national government is targeting them, that they feel seen and heard and that they matter, their voices matter. Your voice is your vote, is a saying that they often point to. So they think it’s meaningful, and this is partly why some folks advocate for voting rights for immigrants. Today, maybe less so because of the potential target it puts on your back.

Stephen Richer (36:41):
Is there social science literature about how it might change a community? There’s the philosophical objection to non-citizens voting, which is this isn’t a right that should be conferred upon non-citizens because it’s unique to people who are citizens of the country. And then there’s the political objection, which is I think if we have non-citizens voting, they won’t vote for my team, therefore I don’t want non-citizens to vote. Then there’s the question about, well, I don’t want non-citizens to vote, or I do want non-citizens to vote, because I think that their voting will have this impact on the public policy of our community.

(37:25):
So has there been any study of what happened to a municipal area and its governance before and after it either had or didn’t have non-citizens voting?

Ron Hayduk (37:38):
Yeah. As I mentioned, the examples from New York City suggests that immigrant voting did lead to improvements in the schools and better student outcomes. And actually also some related developments from this mobilization included the increase in renovation of affordable housing.

Stephen Richer (38:01):
Why would the schools part be… You would think that that’s already a pretty well-established interest of everyone who’s there.

Ron Hayduk (38:10):
Right. But to the extent that not all those schools in all the districts were equally good quality, this is partly what led to the improvement and to the building of more schools, then adjacent with some other issues that they raised around affordable housing and the quality of that affordable housing. So there are definitely policy benefits. This is true of the history.

(38:35):
If you look at the history of immigrant voting, immigrants injected issues around even anti-slavery, or labor issues, or temperance, and economic regulation to the extent that those were issues, not just particular to immigrants, but to the extent that those were things that immigrants and their citizen neighbors cared about and they jointly participated in not just the organizing and social movements, but the elections and determination of which party and candidates were going to go in which direction.

(39:12):
So yeah, I mean there’s certainly examples where that could diverge, and this is partly what I think our country’s embroiled in, these questions about who are real Americans? What’s the nature of America? Are we a multiracial egalitarian democracy, or are we a Christian Anglo republic? I think that immigrant voting brings these debates about immigration and voting rights together in ways that are very fascinating and worth discussing. I think there’s some wonderful lessons to draw.

Archon Fung (39:48):
Yeah. I have a question about the motivation. I think it’s been in New York for a really long time, but then in newer places like Tacoma Park, or I don’t know when it happened in San Francisco, but this is a question about the motivation. The political philosopher Judith Shklar said, “People fight like hell for the vote, but once they get it, they don’t actually vote that much.” So there’s the recognition value, “Oh, I have it and now I’m an equal member of the community because I can vote. I get this recognition.”

(40:21):
You were talking about that. That’s different from now I have voice to change outcomes I care about, like the potholes, or the quality of the schools. In these places where immigrant voting has expanded the localities in the last few decades, is it primarily about the recognition part or primarily about the voice to change outcomes part?

Ron Hayduk (40:45):
It’s both. It’s not either/or. At least that’s what the advocates for immigrant voting rights will tell you, and immigrants themselves. I think they’re the best spokespeople to answer these questions. I love Judith Shklar, and I love that work that you cited too. I guess to just sort of add to it, the efforts to restore immigrant voting in the United States really come out of the civil rights movement in New York City. That’s when immigrant voting was restored in part in response to the civil rights movement that took place there.

(41:18):
But the sanctuary movement that took place in the 1980s and ’90s is when Maryland restored a lot of the… The reason why Maryland has 16 municipalities that allow immigrants to vote is the Maryland State Constitution allows their localities to change their voting rules without state approval. Unlike Massachusetts-

Archon Fung (41:37):
Oh, I see.

Ron Hayduk (41:38):
… where you might be surprised to learn, Cambridge, Newton, Brookline, Amherst, they pass local laws to allow non-citizens to vote in their local elections, but they need state-enabling legislation to implement those laws. So there’s other municipalities that have sought to do this, Portland, Maine, and a number of other places, but they’ve been blocked.

Stephen Richer (42:01):
You do hit on one of the ironies about this conversation though, Archon, especially when I hear people alleging that large numbers of non-citizens are breaking the law in order to be able to participate in American elections. The irony is that this November, approximately 50% of eligible Americans, meaning that they’re 18 years of age, they haven’t committed a felony and they’ve not lost their voting rights for other reasons, approximately 50% of Americans are going to participate.

(42:31):
And so, sometimes I find it fanciful to suggest that large number of non-citizens are willing to break the law to participate when many Americans, sometimes even most Americans, aren’t even willing to do something that is lawful in order to participate. And so, I sort of wonder, has this become a deluded right, the right to vote? Would it have been as earnestly sought today as it was previously? I guess that also leads me to believe more in the power of what it represents and the expression rather than influencing public policy as Archon, you just teed up which of those two is it?

Archon Fung (43:16):
Right. A South Asian scholar friend of mine said that what’s really special about the vote in India to people who participate is given the massive inequality, economic, social, everything else, it’s like the one day when everybody’s the same. And so, that’s huge value regardless of whether it has an effect on public policy.

Ron Hayduk (43:39):
Right. But why would in India, the regime move to strike 120 million voters from the rolls? Why is it that here in the United States-

Archon Fung (43:52):
Electoral outcomes.

Ron Hayduk (43:53):
Exactly. So the fights over the minutiae of voting rights, let alone who can vote and who can’t, clearly they think there’s something at stake. That’s partly why they move to expand or constrict access to the franchise. What’s the expression? If you shape the rules, you can shape the outcomes. They get that. I think to the extent that that does suggest that in moments when people feel like there’s something at stake, people do show up.

(44:27):
I mean, there’s certainly more people that could and should show up. You’re right, there’s like 90 million people that didn’t vote in the last presidential election, more than the total number of people that voted for Donald Trump and more than the total number of people that voted for Kamala Harris. You could say the party of non-voters in the United States is the majority party. We have a long way to go, but in the 19th century, voter participation rates were higher and in other countries, voter participation rates are higher.

(44:56):
By the way, I just should mention, in other countries, non-citizen voting is not an anomaly either. In fact, it’s in the last 50 years that many countries have moved to expand the franchise to non-citizens. The European Union is the classic case when in 1992, 1993, the European Union was created and any member state, any person moving from one state to another in the EU could vote in those elections in the state that they moved into. That’s true in a number of countries in Latin America, New Zealand, Africa.

(45:39):
So this idea of greater inclusion and that residents have a stake in the election and should have a say is something that one could argue is kind of an expansion of democracy or a deepening of democracy. These questions of how should we do democracy? This election that we’re having here is a good moment to think about who’s included and who’s excluded, and what’s at stake.

Stephen Richer (46:08):
My last question, and then I’ll hand it over to Archon, but my last question will be, what’s the future? Has this conversation changed? Has the landscape changed five, 10 years from now?

Archon Fung (46:20):
Yeah. And to put a sharper point on it, do you think that the side that you’re on, restoring immigrant voting, is in retreat compared to the many ballot measures and states that have banned non-citizen voting? Has the momentum shifted and now there’s this onslaught to restrict rather than to expand? And to Stephen’s question, do you see that changing or is that just the world we’re in now?

Ron Hayduk (46:51):
I think that you captured the world we’re in now very well. I think that it’s true that the groups that have moved to limit or block immigrant voting rights have been most successful and most descendant in this period of time. It’s true that the advocates for immigrant voting rights are kind of trying to fly under the radar screen. They’re not encouraging immigrants, even in places they can vote, to go register and vote because those voter registration rules are public documents and those could be weaponized to target people for detention and deportation.

(47:27):
So this is not the moment where immigrant voting rights are being expanded, but the future’s open. I don’t have a crystal ball that works, but it’s possible that we could be in another political space where these ideas about how to deepen democracy, how to increase greater accountability might resurface. Who knows what that holds. Certainly, it’s a trend globally and I think it would be fascinating for it to be a discussion that we have in our country at some point in the future, even if it’s not something that ultimately gets enacted. It’s not for me to decide, of course. I mean, immigrants should be at the table to decide these questions first and foremost.

Archon Fung (48:13):
Right. Great. My last question is the magic wand question, not the crystal ball question, but the magic wand question. If you had a magic wand, what is your ideal policy? I think we agreed that somebody’s here for a very short period, maybe they shouldn’t be able to vote maybe at any level, but then on the other, you obviously think that the franchise for immigrants should be more permissive. So what is your ideal policy? What levels, what qualifications, et cetera?

Ron Hayduk (48:44):
Yeah. Again, I hesitate to say what I think should be the case because it’s the immigrants, the 25 million people in the United States, that should be involved in these conversations. Imagine if those 25 million could vote, what would the policies look like for immigrants in the country nationally, let alone in some of the states and localities? I think it really could make a difference. What that could look like ideally, maybe that 1996 law is repealed, maybe there’s conversation about that at the federal level, but I certainly think that it would be possible more likely at the state or local level in certain areas where immigrants are concentrated and where they… Although increasingly immigrants are in every census tract in the United States basically.

(49:37):
But again, I would just sort of emphasize that immigrant leaders, immigrant organizations, immigrant advocates themselves should be at the tables for the discussion of these questions because they’re the true stakeholders and folks that should be weighing in to decide these things. I certainly think it’s a worthwhile discussion for our country to think about these questions around citizenship, citizenship broadly about participatory citizenship, not just formal legal citizenship about stakeholder status, about national identity, about a whole host of things that I think are really embroiling our country in ways that are really problematic. I think that this might help us think about these questions.

(50:23):
The history might help take the edge off for some folks that it sounds so left field, so outlandish, but it’s actually, as I try to argue, as old as the country.

Stephen Richer (50:37):
Well, I’ll confess that I spend the vast majority of my time on this topic trying to discern whether or not non-citizens are actually participating in American elections right now, but this was very educational for me. I didn’t know this history, I didn’t know this global comparison, and I hadn’t considered some of these reasonings. And so, I really appreciate you being here.

(51:01):
For those of you who are interested in Professor Hayduk’s work, you can go to his bio on the San Francisco State University Political Science webpage. For those of you who joined us live, thank you for your questions. Thank you for your input. Those of you who are joining us later, thank you for watching. I will just say as my closing remark that Professor Hayduk, I’m sorry, I did not notice the bobbleheads on your shelves originally. And so, you must be a baseball purist, which means that you like baseball that is just well-played and the Brewers and the Rays are well played even if they’re not-

Archon Fung (51:41):
Popular.

Stephen Richer (51:42):
… major metropolitan areas that draw a higher audience.

Archon Fung (51:47):
Yeah. Great.

Stephen Richer (51:47):
Archon?

Ron Hayduk (51:48):
Thank you so much, Stephen. I really appreciate that. I am a true Met fan, a Met fan by the way, but I love this mobile, and it’s been a fun series to watch, so I’m a fan like you.

Archon Fung (51:58):
That’s terrific. Thanks so much, Ron, for joining. Thanks everyone for tuning in and we look forward to seeing you next week. Please vote, and then we’ll be talking about the vote next week, the midterm elections. Thanks everyone.