SC to Stop Spread of Legal Non-Citizen Voting
COLUMBIA, SC - Voters in eight states, including South Carolina, will decide in November whether to reserve voting for only U.S. citizens. The Citizen Only Voting Amendments come as a result of the growing trend of municipalities allowing citizens of foreign countries to vote in municipal and school board elections. Foreign citizen voting is legal in at least nineteen cities across the country.
“Citizen Only Voting is the one thing we can all agree on,” South Carolina Senator Josh Kimbrell stated. “We disagree on many things but not on this. Americans of all stripes agree that only citizens of the United States should be voting in the United States.”
Foreign citizen voting is legal in California, Illinois, Maryland, Vermont, and Washington, DC. New York City’s city council voted to legalize foreign citizen voting in 2021. The law that would enfranchise 900,000 foreign citizens is making its way through the court system.
Currently, only twelve state constitutions reserve the right to vote for only U.S. citizens. Six of these states have adopted Citizen Only Voting Amendments in the last several years. Since 2018, voters in North Dakota, Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Ohio, and Louisiana have chosen to amend their state constitutions and require that voters be citizens of the United States.
“There is a lot of misinformation on the issue of non-citizen voting,” said ACV President Avi McCullah. “To combat this, we have produced a comprehensive briefing book to help members of the media educate voters.”
Americans for Citizen Voting’s Briefing Book contains a list of the nineteen cities where non-citizen voting is now happening, details of the legislative votes in each state, polling information, and much more.
“Since much of the public discourse about non-citizen voting has referred to non-citizens voting illegally in federal elections, reporters can’t help but conflate these two very different issues,” McCullah explained. “However, these amendments to state constitutions have nothing to do with federal elections. They deal with state and local elections.”
“Legal non-citizen voting is happening right now and it will spread to other states unless these states pass Citizen Only Voting Amendments,” added McCullah. “That’s a fact.”
