Voters in liberal-minded Portland, Ore., and the swing state of Ohio this week nixed the notion of non-citizens casting ballots in future elections. The results continue a losing streak that migrant-voting campaigns are suffering at the polls and in the courts.
Multnomah County – home to the sanctuary city of Portland – voted down an initiative to enfranchise foreign nationals, including illegal aliens. The rejection was significant, and surprising, given that Joe Biden carried 79.2 percent of the area’s vote in 2020.
Also Tuesday, Ohio voters overwhelmingly passed a statewide ban on non-citizen voting. The law extends existing federal, state and county prohibitions to every city and town in the Buckeye State.
Ohio is now the seventh state to place a non-citizen voting ban in its constitution. Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Minnesota and North Dakota also have “citizens-only” provisions, according to Americans for Citizen Voting.
FAIR reported earlier this year that the push for non-citizen voting in New York and California hit legal walls, with courts ruling that enabling laws in those states were unconstitutional.
The fight is far from over though.
Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser is weighing a measure to extend voting rights to an estimated 50,000 migrants in the nation’s capital. Eschewing an actual vote by the public, the City Council took it upon itself to pass the plan last month.
Bowser can sign the measure into law, but, as in Portland, stiff headwinds are gusting from the port side. The Washington Post flat out called it a bad idea.
In a wide-ranging critique of the political, legal and social implications, the Post exposed the agenda: “Some progressives hope that reshaping the electorate will allow them to reshape local politics, prodding the city further to the left on issues such as rent control and spending on social programs.”
Such concerns, voiced by a reliably liberal newspaper, are resonating across America.
