[M]ontpelier citizens will be going to the polls on noncitizen voting in November while Winooski city leaders have hit the brakes — for now.
Capital City residents have collected enough signatures to mandate a vote on whether noncitizens who are legal residents of the city can vote in municipal elections.
In Winooski, the City Council voted 3-2 Sept. 17 against putting a measure on November’s ballot, instead setting up a committee to consider the issue without setting a timeline for a vote. The proposed question asked whether to allow all residents 18 and older to vote in municipal elections regardless of their citizen status.
City leaders want more time to consider the process, focusing on the impact on the city and how to do targeted community outreach. The soon-to-be-established committee will eventually return to the council with a recommendation on when the measure should go before voters.
In Montpelier, approximately 330 signatures were collected to put the measure on the ballot, city clerk John Odum said. The petitioners needed 302 signatures, which is 5 percent of active voters in the city, to be successful.
Odum said he was interested in seeing how the vote turns out, especially because the issue hasn’t split on partisan lines like most debates.
“I think the crux of the debate is, ‘Can you be a citizen of your local community without being a citizen of the greater country?’” he said. “I think that’s the operative question people are going to struggle with.”
Fewer than a dozen people in Montpelier would be affected by the measure, Odum said. And even if approved by the voters, it would also have be approved by the Legislature, which would be a lengthy process with an uncertain result.
Winooski Mayor Seth Leonard said discussions of noncitizen voting were eliciting strong feelings from residents on both sides of the issue and said more time was needed to let the community discussion occur.
“Issues like this that have deep nerves in the community, and that there’s a lot of passion about, require a public process that takes time,” Leonard said. “The timeline that we were moving on, from my perspective, didn’t give us a chance to play out that public process in a way that leaves the community feeling like there was a good exchange on that issue.”
At the council’s Sept. 17 meeting, city Councilors Eric Covey and Hal Colston supported the motion to put the matter on November’s ballot while Leonard, Deputy Mayor Nicole Mace and Councilor Kristine Lott were opposed.
On Monday, the council decided the committee should be allowed to start its work and then make a recommendation on when to put the measure before voters. The committee will feature two City Council representatives, two school district representatives (assuming the school district wants to participate), a staff liaison and four community members, one of whom will be an alternate,
Colston volunteered to be on the committee.
“I really wanted to see more civic engagement from our residents and see them more involved in the public square, so I think this speaks really clearly to that and people having the privilege to vote who are not citizens,” he said.
He said he hoped it would be on the ballot at the March Town Meeting Day but the committee needed to ensure that timeline would be feasible.
The city will also step up its outreach efforts, including targeting noncitizens for their input. Residents will be able to attend public information sessions and forums.
Leonard said it was important that those in support and those opposed to the measure both take part in the discussions.
“This is that chance for people to have their voice heard on a very important decision, not just have it voted upon,” he said.
The city will also seek input from the school district, governor’s office, Vermont League of Cities and Towns, legislators and other municipalities considering the issue.
Noncitizen voting has been approved in a growing number of cities and towns across the country. For example, College Park, Maryland, approved noncitizen voting in September 2017, and noncitizen voting has also been discussed in Boston.
But questions about whether federal immigration officials could access voter rolls and target noncitizen voters led the measure to be tabled in Portland, Maine.
These concerns were also discussed in Winooski, but legal work on the issue was paused after the council decided not to put the issue before voters in November, Leonard said.
The Montpelier measure relates only to legal residents, who would not appear to be of concern to immigration officials, Odum said.
Burlington voters overwhelmingly rejected a measure to allow noncitizen voting when it appeared on the ballot on Town Meeting Day in 2015.
Odum said the efforts in Montpelier are focused on the municipality and does not intend to have statewide implications.
“The folks who are talking about this, they really are just talking about Montpelier,” he said. “They are talking about how the community of Montpelier makes it decisions and runs its affairs.”
