On a cold December night in 1773, the Sons of Liberty dumped tea into the Boston Harbor to protest taxation without representation. This rallying cry of the Revolutionary War may seem like an issue of the past, more likely to be found in history textbooks than modern debates, yet over two hundred years later, thousands are still fighting across Massachusetts for the same rights.
While only citizens can vote in federal elections, the voting eligibility for local elections is left to states and municipalities. For Massachusetts, the state constitution mirrors the federal one, limiting suffrage to those who have attained citizenship. However, with 1.2 million immigrants in Massachusetts, making up 17% of the population, the designation between citizen and foreign-born residents shouldn’t determine who can vote.
Just as the qualifications of being a property-owning White man have been abandoned over time, noncitizen voting is an often forgotten point of voting rights that we must reexamine in a modern light. Once heralded as a beacon of democracy, Massachusetts now has the power — and perhaps the responsibility — to grant suffrage to noncitizens.
For many, expanding the right to vote to this extent may seem unreasonable; in America, voting and citizenship appear to go hand in hand. In reality, for much of the nation’s history, noncitizens have been able to vote in some capacity. In fact, the original Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 used the word “inhabitant” and wasn’t restricted to “citizen” until 1822.
According to Harvard professor Alex Keyssar, when the U.S. was founded there was a blurry distinction between inhabitant and citizen, and the process of naturalization wasn’t even a formalized part of the federal government until 1809. In a country founded by immigrants, foreign-born people were the norm, making voting for noncitizen residents a natural part of the new democracy. Even after certain states like Massachusetts tightened voting laws, new Midwestern states adopted noncitizen voting as a way to attract settlers, sparking a revitalization of noncitizen suffrage in 1848.
If this used to be the case, what led to the current distinction between resident and citizen? Generally speaking, xenophobia generated by World War I put an end to noncitizen suffrage across the U.S. As immigrant communities of Eastern Europeans and Latin Americans grew without completely assimilating into American culture, the United States continued to transition from a country made of immigrants to viewing foreigners as the cultural “other.”
This cultural shift spurred racist immigration reforms like the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Immigration Act of 1924 that instilled strict ethnic quotas. In 1926, the final state, Arkansas, shut the door on noncitizen voting. This end of suffrage was just another in a long list of voting restrictions, from poll taxes to literacy tests, meant to disenfranchise poor Americans of color and maintain the cultural status quo.
Today, municipalities across the country have slowly begun to reinstate noncitizen voting. In the last couple of years, towns in Maryland and Vermont have passed laws allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections, and Chicago and San Francisco have pushed forward legislation regarding voting in school board elections. New York City also recently attempted to enfranchise 800,000 residents — seeking to guarantee the right to vote in municipal elections to residents with legal status or work visas — but unfortunately the measure was quickly overturned by the New York State Supreme Court for violating the state constitution’s requirement of citizenship, meaning that a referendum would be needed to further pursue the issue.
However, in Massachusetts, the home-rule petition process provides a way around the requirements in the state constitution. Home-rule is just what it sounds like: Cities in Massachusetts can request changes or exemptions to state law specific to the needs of their township. Amherst, Brookline, Cambridge, Newton, Wayland, and Somerville have already passed ordinances to grant noncitizens the power to vote in local or school elections, but these laws cannot go into effect until approved by the state legislature and governor, which has yet to happen.
Until the state legislature acts, progress on noncitizen voting in Massachusetts is at a standstill, but the new law providing driver’s licenses to immigrants without legal status may have just opened up a window for further change. This law, which is itself steeped in controversy, represents a vital step forward for the rights of all residents in Massachusetts and could pave the way for widespread local changes in how Massachusetts law views immigrants.
This change is especially important in Boston, where 13.5% of residents are not citizens. In 2018, Boston City Councilwoman Andrea Campbell proposed local voting rights for Bostonians in the DACA program, with green cards, or work visas, which is a total of 48,000 people. Although the measure did not go through, candidate questionnaires conducted by Progressive Massachusetts predict that 10 out of 13 of the current Council members would be in favor of a similar policy.
Noncitizen voting is also important in school board elections. Many parents pay taxes to their local schools without getting a say in their children’s education, and in San Francisco a noncitizen voting measure increased turnout for a school board election. Enabling all residents to participate in Massachusetts communities helps the community as a whole by sparking conversations on civic engagement and guaranteeing that school boards represent the best interests for all students.
Furthermore, even for families pursuing citizenship, the naturalization process can take years. For Chetan Tiwari, a Bostonian who wrote about his experience for Boston University’s radio station, it would have taken him and his wife 12 years to obtain the right to vote via citizenship, at which point their children would have already been through the local school system. Although some are worried that noncitizen suffrage will discourage naturalization, the road to citizenship can be long and complicated for many, and in the meantime, immigrants are impacted daily by their state and local policies.
As more and more voting restrictions are being passed to disenfranchise marginalized communities, reinstating noncitizen voting could additionally empower the voices of people of color in local politics. According to data from the most recent census, only 61.6% of the Massachusetts population identifies as only White, yet in the portion of the population eligible to vote (citizens 18 or older), 78.6% are White alone. Based on these statistics, people of color are being underrepresented in local voting in part due to lack of citizenship. Allowing legal immigrants to vote regardless of their naturalization status would move Massachusetts to a “multiracial democracy,” as Beth Huang, director of the MAVoter Table, explained.
With cities on board, a Democratic supermajority in the legislature, and lists of progressive benefits, what is blocking noncitizen voting in Massachusetts from becoming a reality? Despite the Massachusetts Democratic Party platform supporting the right of all immigrants of legal status to vote in local elections, the legislature has failed to address these policies in a timely fashion, and with the primaries coming up, the issue of noncitizen voting is missing from many Democratic candidates’ priorities. This fight reflects a larger issue in our democracy: It’s not enough to have representatives that agree with us. We need representatives that take action on issues impacting thousands of residents. So, when you cast your vote this September, remember your neighbors who are unable to do the same.
The original artwork for this magazine was created by Harvard College student, Allaura Osborne, for the exclusive use of the HPR.
