Voters in two Vermont cities will likely weigh in this November on letting noncitizens cast ballots in municipal elections.
City councilors in Winooski this week agreed to put a question on the ballot during November’s general election on amending the municipality’s charter to let noncitizens vote. And in Montpelier, a citizen petition to do the same is already circulating and expected to garner enough signatures to land on the ballot.
If voters in Montpelier and Winooski greenlight noncitizen voting for municipal elections, state lawmakers will get their say. Municipal charters have the force of law, and all amendments must pass the Legislature.
Community members in Montpelier first considered the subject in April, when John Odum, the capital city’s clerk, decided to hold a community forum. Odum said that every year around Town Meeting Day, a handful of people would reach out to ask why their spouses couldn’t vote despite paying taxes, living in town, and sending children to city’s schools.
“I always responded as if they were asking me why there wasn’t a helipad on the roof of City Hall,” he said in an interview Friday.
But Odum finally did some research, and found the concept wasn’t that unusual. A handful of cities in the country already allow the practice in select local contests. (It would take a federal law change to allow non-citizens to vote in national elections.)
“It’s not uncommon in other parts of the world, and historically, it used to be the norm across the country,” he said.
A refugee resettlement site, Winooski is one of the state’s most diverse communities. City Councilor Eric Covey said it didn’t make sense that so many of its residents were disenfranchised from weighing in on bonds, budgets, and local races.
“If we want to continue to say that we’re an inclusive and welcoming community, we can do better in ensuring that everybody has a seat at the table when it comes to local decision-making,” he said.
Winooski resident Lauren Sampson sits on the planning board, the library committee, and is a guardian ad litem in Chittenden County, advocating for children caught up in the court system.
But on Town Meeting Day, the Canadian citizen stays home.
Sampson supports allowing noncitizens like herself to vote, because she thinks people should be encouraged to participate in government. But Sampson, an attorney, also practices immigration law, and she argues getting citizenship remains out of reach for many. (Samson has applied for permanent residence status, a step toward citizenship.)
Obtaining citizenship is an expensive, lengthy and intrusive process – one that requires documentation that can be hard to come by if your native country is underdeveloped or war-torn, she said.
“I think it can be easy to say: Just become a citizen,” she said. “It’s easy to forget that the decision is not always yours.”
In Montpelier, Odum said city councilors passed on putting the question on the ballot themselves and instead encouraged a petition process.
“I suggested that it was going to be controversial enough, particularly when it gets to the Legislature, and that it would be important to demonstrate a real grassroots support for it,” he said.
Still, Odum said feedback at public meetings had so far been “overwhelmingly positive.”
This year won’t be the first time non-citizen voting in local elections has come up in Vermont. Progressive Burlington city officials put the question before the Queen City’s voters in 2015, but the measure failed by a steep margin.
In Portland, Maine, city councilors this year considered letting noncitizens vote, but ultimately demurred from putting the question on the ballot after advocates, including the ACLU, said the proposal could backfire and put noncitizen voters in the crosshairs of federal immigration agents if the city didn’t take certain precautions. The topic has since become a political firestorm, eliciting the ire of Republican Gov. Paul LePage, who will soon be out of office.
