Ohio RepublicansThey support a measure on Nov. 8 that would bar noncitizens vote in local elections.
It would make Ohio the seventh state to take such a step if it passes and could motivate turnout among GOP voters in this year’s high-stakes midterm elections. A close race is underway for the seat in the U.S. Senate.
Frank LaRose is the Republican Secretary of State and state elections chief. State Issue 2 was a proposal by Ohio’s GOP-led State Legislature. It would make a small but crucial wording change in the Ohio Constitution. Instead of guaranteeing voting rights to all citizens of the U.S., it would allow only certain citizens to vote.
LaRose, who is up to reelection, stated that most people had assumed there was an interdiction on noncitizens being allowed to vote in federal and state elections since 1996. state electionsThe law did not address the question, but local elections could be covered. He said that until a “bad idea”, which was originating from the East and West coasts, entered, it was.
LaRose stated that it was a bad idea for people to give away their right to vote. He spoke at an October news conference promoting the issue. “I believe that citizenship is valuable, and citizenship has status. Many of our ancestors worked hard to get that citizenship.
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In 2020 six states — Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Minnesota and North Dakota — adopted the “only citizens” alternative in their state constitutions, according to the group Americans for Citizen Voting.
Legal immigrants fighting to be allowed to vote in local elections invoke the same patriotic rallying cry as the American Revolution. They claim they pay taxes but can’t vote for offices like mayor or city council, or levies for their children’s schools.
Melissa John, a New York City schoolteacher and green card holder, stated that “we are all taxpayers”. She fought for the city’s noncitizen voting right law. The law passed in January but was later halted by a Judge.
“So if my monies are going to be going into a system to fund and make changes in my immediate community, or wherever I teach or I work or I socialize, then I — and other individuals like myself — should be able to put our voice behind individuals that align with your philosophy,” she said.
In Ohio, only one small town in modern times — liberal, 3,700-resident Yellow Springs — has approved a charter amendment allowing noncitizen voting on local candidates and issues. LaRose stopped the 2019 referendum that passed the amendment. He claimed that it violated the federal and state constitutions.
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Brian Housh (City Council President) stated that Village leaders didn’t agree, but they didn’t have the resources or means to file a legal challenge. He said they would have claimed that expanding voting rights to noncitizens is within Yellow Springs’ rights of home rule and local control.
LaRose stated at the news conference, “a large administrative burden and lift” for local elections boards that allowing noncitizens vote would not only be against one of the most important privileges of citizenship. Housh disagrees. Housh stated that the Greene County Board of Elections had told the village that it was “quite certain” it could count and offer ballots to the 30 noncitizens eligible for inclusion on the rolls.
Frank LaRose, Republican Secretary of State, speaks at the Ohio Statehouse Oct. 6, 2022 about a constitutional amendment which would ban noncitizen voter.
(AP Photo/Julie Carr Smyth).
Housh regards the anti-immigrant rhetoric about the ballot issue as a scare tactic in order to drive GOP voters and generate campaign donations.
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Housh stated that Secretary LaRose had accused him of disrupting the election and being un-American. “I get it. Most Ohio communities would not allow non-U.S. citizens the right to vote. This is what works for our community. “Our citizens value diversity and believe people who contribute to our community should be represented.”
Yellow Springs learned from Maryland. It has 11 of the 15 U.S. cities that have authorized noncitizen vote. New York, San Francisco, and two Vermont towns complete the list.
Barney Rush, mayor of Chevy Chase, Maryland, said his suburban Washington, D.C., community has a number of residents who are foreign-born and working at embassies or for international organizations — and they wanted a say in local life.
He stated that these are long-standing town residents and have an interest in town affairs. Many of them also owned property, so they had a vested in the way the town ran itself. “It was a matter of recognising people who live in the town.
He said that about 20 noncitizens were added onto the rolls in a neighborhood of approximately 1,000 homes. The program has been in place since its inception in 2018.
Republicans are concerned that a trend that started in small towns is now spreading to larger cities.
San Francisco allows noncitizen parent and guardians of schoolchildren the right to vote in school board races. About 13,600 students come from families whose second language is English — one possible indicator of how many thousands of people might be eligible. John Arntz the elections director said that while it is not certain how many people are eligible, only 63 non-citizens have yet to register.
In New York, more than 800,000 noncitizens and “Dreamers” — those brought to the U.S. as children — would be empowered to vote under its new law. Similar proposals are on the November ballot for Oakland, which is a city of approximately 420,000 located across the bay from San Francisco. The District of Columbia city council, which has more than 700,000., voted this month to allow noncitizens to vote.
Bill Seitz, a state representative and one of the Republican cosponsors for the Ohio legislation that placed the noncitizen ban onto the ballot, stated it was Ohio is especially importantIt is imperative to take action because cities in the country have the power to tax those who live but work there.
He said, “So if these municipalities pick up the liberal progressive mantra that allows noncitizens vote, they’ll be able not only to vote in their local elections but also on increasing taxes payable to nonresident workers who commute to the city to work.” “That’s why all of us — township residents, folks in the unincorporated area, folks in the rural area — better wake up.”
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Luis Gil (a Republican running for central Ohio county commissioner) is one of those U.S. citizens backing the Ohio amendment. Gil, who was 18 when he came to the U.S. to escape Venezuela, said that he didn’t believe in taking shortcuts to citizenship.
“Most immigrants, we don’t think this way,” he said at LaRose’s news conference. “We are aware that this is something we must earn. We have to abide by the same rules as everyone, that’s it.”
