Voting Rights, Registration and Requirements

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      Voting Rights Groups Press Biden on Response to GOP Laws

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      Dozens of voting rights groups and left-leaning get-out-the-vote organizations said on Tuesday that they were sending a letter to the Biden administration demanding more aggressive action to pass federal voting legislation. The letter also criticizes what the groups perceive as a misguided White House strategy that puts too much emphasis on organizing — the grass-roots work of registering, educating and turning out voters — to combat dozens of new voting restrictions passed by Republicans across the country this year.“Some may think we can overcome these unwarranted barriers to the ballot box by just increasing our organizing efforts,” the letter says. “We write to tell you unequivocally that that is simply not true.”The letter is the latest evidence of growing frustration between voting rights groups and the White House. The organizations and their allies have called for more public urgency from Mr. Biden, while administration officials have been preaching patience, noting that Democrats face long odds in the Senate of passing any federal voting legislation without overhauling the filibuster.While the administration remains committed to finding a way to pass a federal voting law, it has simultaneously been pushing voter registration, education and get-out-the-vote programs. It announced a $25 million investment in organizing efforts last month.But these moves have led to tension with voting rights groups, especially after voting rights advocates said that they had been told by some top Biden allies that it was possible to “out-organize voter suppression.”“Given the scale of the attack, I think it’s not for the president to say that he’s looking for bipartisan solutions when clearly there’s one political party that is actively undermining democracy and minimizing insurrection,” said Andrea Mercado, an executive director of Florida Rising, a progressive group. “Measures like ending the filibuster do need to be taken to protect voting rights.”For its part, the Biden administration has been ramping up its pressure on Congress to find a path forward for a federal voting law. The president met last week with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, to try to map out the next steps, and Democratic senators have been drafting a compromise bill they plan to introduce in the coming weeks.The letter on Tuesday was signed by more than 49 state-level organizations, including the New Georgia Project Action Fund, LUCHA Arizona and Detroit Action, as well as some national organizations like Black Voters Matter Fund. The groups said they had knocked on tens of millions of doors during the 2020 campaign in battleground states like Georgia, Arizona and Florida, playing a key part in the grass-roots organizing efforts that helped elect Mr. Biden and allowed Democrats to take back the Senate.But despite their success last year, the organizations said in their letter, “our organizing capacity is not unlimited.”“We are facing a rising tide of voter suppression unlike anything we have seen,” the letter states. “While grass-roots efforts remain critical to ensuring fair and representative elections, so too is federal legislation to protect and preserve the rights of the constituencies we serve.” More

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      There Is No Good Reason You Should Have to Be a Citizen to Vote

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      This essay is part of a series exploring bold ideas to revitalize and renew the American experiment. Read more about this project in a note from Ezekiel Kweku, Opinion’s politics editor.

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      Washingtonians love to complain about taxation without representation. But for me and my fellow noncitizens, it is a fact of political life that we submit to unquestioningly year after year, primary after primary, presidential election after presidential election. Nearly 15 million people living legally in the United States, most of whom contribute as much as any natural-born American to this country’s civic, cultural and economic life, don’t have a say in matters of politics and policy because we — resident foreign nationals, or “aliens” as we are sometimes called — cannot vote.Considering the Supreme Court’s recent decision undermining voting rights, and Republicans’ efforts to suppress, redistrict and manipulate their way to electoral security, it’s time for Democrats to radically expand the electorate. Proposing federal legislation to give millions of young people and essential workers a clear road to citizenship is a good start. But there’s another measure that lawmakers both in Washington and state capitals should put in place: lifting voting restrictions on legal residents who aren’t citizens — people with green cards, people here on work visas, and those who arrived in the country as children and are still waiting for permanent papers.Expanding the franchise in this way would give American democracy new life, restore immigrants’ trust in government and send a powerful message of inclusion to the rest of the world.It’s easy to assume that restricting the franchise to citizens is an age-old, nonnegotiable fact. But it’s actually a relatively recent convention and a political choice. Early in the United States’ history, voting was a function not of national citizenship but of gender, race and class. As a result, white male landowners of all nationalities were encouraged to play an active role in shaping American democracy, while women and poor, Indigenous and enslaved people could not. That wholesale discrimination is unquestionably worse than excluding resident foreigners from the polls, but the point is that history shows how readily voting laws can be altered — and that restrictive ones tend not to age well.Another misconception is that citizen voting rights have always been the prerogative of the federal government. In fact, states have largely decided who had a say in local, state and national elections. Arkansas was the last state to eliminate noncitizen voting in 1926, and it wasn’t until 1996 that Congress doubled down with the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which made voting in federal elections while foreign — already not permitted because of state-level rules — a criminal, and deportable, offense. (This means that congressional Democrats working on immigration and election reform can reverse the 1996 sanctions the same way they voted them in.)The strongest case for noncitizen voting today is representation: The more voters show up to the polls, the more accurately elections reflect peoples’ desires. The United States already has plenty of institutions that account for noncitizens: The census aims to reach all residents because it believes everyone, even aliens, matters. Corporations enjoy free speech and legal personhood — and they’re not even people. Would it be such a stretch to give a noncitizen resident a say in who gets elected to their state legislature, Congress or the White House?What’s more, allowing noncitizens to vote in federal, state and municipal elections would help revitalize American democracy at a time when enthusiasm and trust are lacking. While 2020 was considered a “high turnout” election, only about 65 percent of eligible voters cast ballots. Compare that to Germany, where turnout was 76 percent in the last general election.Democrats are likely to be the biggest beneficiaries of this change — at least at first. But it could have interesting ripple effects: Elected Republicans might be induced to appeal to a more diverse constituency, or perhaps to enthuse their constituents so deeply that they too start to vote in greater numbers.It’s also just good civics: Allowing people to vote gives them even more of a sense of investment in their towns, cities, communities and country. There’s a detachment that comes with not being able to vote in the place where you live. Concerns about mixed loyalties, meanwhile, are misplaced. The United States not only allows dual citizenship but also allows dual citizens to vote — and from abroad. Is there any reason to think resident foreigners should be less represented?Voting is, in a sense, a reward for becoming an American. But in truth, it’s often much harder to get a visa or green card than to then become a naturalized citizen. It took me 15 years and over $10,000 in legal fees (not to mention the cost of college) to obtain permanent residency. The citizenship test and oath feel comparatively like a piece of cake.It shouldn’t be this onerous to emigrate. But given that it is, it would make much more sense to make residents provide proof of voter registration as a requirement for naturalization, rather than the other way around. We will have more than “earned” it. And what better way to learn about American life than to play an active role in deciding its elections?In the absence of federal- or state-level action, local lawmakers are already free let noncitizens decide on things like garbage pickup, parking rules and potholes. Some do. Since 1992, Takoma Park, Md., has allowed all residents to vote, regardless of their citizenship. Nine additional Maryland towns, as well as districts in Vermont and Massachusetts, have voted to re-enfranchise noncitizens. The cities of Chicago, Washington and Portland are also considering the idea, and a bill that would give New York City’s authorized immigrants voting rights has a new supermajority in the City Council.I’ve lived in New York since 2004, but haven’t once had a chance to cast a ballot here. Last fall, I grew so frustrated that I started mailing ballots to my hometown in Switzerland. But voting in a place I haven’t lived in since I was a minor makes about as little sense as not voting in the city where I’ve lived my entire adult life.I’m looking forward to City Council giving me, and the other million or so friendly aliens living here, the right to vote for New York’s officials. But we should be able to vote for our representatives in Washington, too. I hope that Democrats seize their chance, and realize the power and the enthusiasm of their potential constituents. They — and we — will not regret it.Atossa Araxia Abrahamian (@atossaaraxia) is the author of “The Cosmopolites: The Coming Global Citizen.” She is working on a second book about weird jurisdictions.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.hed More

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      After New York Tests a New Way of Voting, Other Cities May Do the Same

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      Elected leaders and voters in New York remain split over the ranked-choice system, but officials in Washington and elsewhere like the results. The most high-profile experiment in ranked-choice voting in U.S. history just took place in New York City. The reviews are mixed.Hundreds of thousands of voters ranked up to five candidates on their ballots in the Democratic primary for mayor, and many were glad to have that option. Others found the system confusing or wished they had been more strategic in making their choices.Some elected officials want to scrap the system because they believe it may disenfranchise Black voters, among others. But for now, it appears, ranked-choice voting is here to stay. Eric Adams, the winner of the Democratic mayoral primary, saw his lead over the second-place candidate shrink from 75,000 votes to only 7,197 after ranked-choices were counted, and he attacked two of his rivals for campaigning together in the race’s final days to try to beat him. One of Mr. Adams’s allies, Councilman I. Daneek Miller of Queens, is promoting a bill that would let New Yorkers decide whether they want to keep ranked-choice voting, although there does not appear to be enough support among his colleagues for it to be approved.“You see these large leads dwindle because of voter rankings,” Mr. Miller said. “Is this an exercise in mediocrity? Do we want fourth- and fifth-place votes deciding leadership?”This year’s primary was the first time New York had used ranked-choice voting in a citywide race. The system is used in other countries and in cities like San Francisco, but it had never been attempted in a larger American city. Other places, including Washington D.C., the Seattle area and Lansing, Mich., could move to adopt the system. Christina Henderson, a member of Washington’s city council and a supporter of a bill that would bring ranked-choice there, said the New York election showed the system’s benefits, including the diversity of winning candidates like Mr. Adams, who is likely to become the city’s second Black mayor.“Races are more dynamic and collegial with genuine policy debates supplanting negative campaign tactics,” Ms. Henderson said.The new system changed how some candidates campaigned for mayor, encouraging them to appeal to their rivals’ supporters to earn a spot on their ballots. By striking a late alliance with Andrew Yang, for example, Kathryn Garcia won over many of his voters.But a major snafu by the city’s perennially dysfunctional Board of Elections — accidentally releasing an inaccurate vote count — could undermine confidence in the system. And although Mr. Adams won the primary, his allies have raised concerns that ranked-choice voting could hurt Black voters who might choose only one candidate. Some Black leaders sued last year to try to stop the system from being introduced.Mr. Adams himself has criticized how ranked-choice voting was rolled out, but he does not want to eliminate it. He said it was an obstacle for some voters and called for more education about it. “Your New York Times readers, your Wall Street Journal readers and all of those that had the ability to analyze all this information, it’s fine for them,” Mr. Adams said in a radio interview on WNYC this week. “But that’s not the reality when English is a second language, that’s not the reality for 85- and 90-year-old voters who are trying to navigate the process. Every new barrier you put in place, you’re going to lose voters in the process.”The system’s supporters have defended it vigorously, arguing that voters did understand how to use it. Maya Wiley, who finished third in the Democratic mayoral primary, wrote a piece for The Washington Post in support of the system despite losing. Ranked-choice advocates say the system helped improve the fortunes of female and minority candidates. The City Council appears poised to have its first-ever female majority, and women finished second and third in the mayoral primary. “We won’t let anyone take away the people’s voice and go back to the old system where costly, low-turn out runoff elections actually disenfranchised people,” said Debbie Louis, the lead organizer for Rank the Vote NYC, a group that supports the voting system. Some voters did not like the new approach. Rebecca Yhisreal, 61, who lives in West Harlem, said she voted for Mr. Adams first and ranked three other candidates on her ballot. But she said she preferred the old system, under which New Yorkers voted for one candidate and if no one got more than 40 percent of the vote, the top two finishers would go to a runoff. “It was kind of confusing,” she said. “I would rather it go back to how it was.”William Brown, a retiree who lives in Harlem, said the crowded mayoral ballot, which had 13 Democrats, had made it difficult for him to make sense of each candidate’s positions and to determine how to rank those he liked best. He said he had ranked Raymond J. McGuire, a former Wall Street executive, first, and had forgotten how many other candidates he ranked.“It’s unfair,” he said. “You have to take the time to understand it, but there’s too many candidates. It’s detrimental.”Mr. Miller, who is in his final year in the City Council and testified at a State Assembly hearing this week with other critics of ranked-choice voting, said residents in his Southeast Queens district had complained to him about the new system. It encouraged voters to focus on the horse race between candidates rather than on issues, he said.Under ranked-choice voting, if no candidate gets more than 50 percent of first-choice votes on an initial tally, the process moves to an elimination-round method. The lowest-polling candidates are eliminated, with their votes reallocated to whichever remaining candidates those voters ranked next. The process continues until one candidate has more than 50 percent of the vote.Some voters expressed regret that they had not been more shrewd by picking between Mr. Adams or Ms. Garcia so that their ballot helped decide the winner. More than 140,000 ballots were “exhausted,” meaning they did not name either finalist and were therefore thrown out. Those ballots represented nearly 15 percent of the 940,000 votes cast, a higher rate than in some other ranked-choice elections. In London Breed’s 2018 mayoral victory in San Francisco, about 8.5 percent of ballots were exhausted. Advocates for ranked-choice voting say the share of exhausted ballots should decrease as New Yorkers become more familiar with the system.Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat in his second term, said he wanted to see more detailed voter data before deciding whether the system was a success. He said he would be concerned if the data showed wealthy voters ranking five candidates and poorer ones not doing so.“What I don’t want to see is a system that enfranchises some people and not others and we need the research to really tell what happened here,” Mr. de Blasio said.The city’s Board of Elections is planning to release detailed ballot information in the coming weeks that will reveal which neighborhoods took full advantage of ranked-choice voting. The information, known as the cast-vote record, will not be made public until recounts are completed in two unresolved City Council races. Corey Johnson, the City Council speaker, does not appear to favor doing away with ranked-choice voting. Asked about his position on Mr. Miller’s bill, Mr. Johnson’s spokeswoman said in a statement that New Yorkers had voted to create the system in 2019.“Nearly three-quarters of voters approved the new system,” the spokeswoman, Jennifer Fermino, said. “The mission now should be to help provide more education on this important change to our elections.”Many voters liked ranked-choice voting. In Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, Andrew Wilkes, 35, a pastor and policy director for Generation Citizen, a nonprofit civic-education group, said he felt the system gave voters more choices and made it easier for candidates of color to enter the race. He ranked Ms. Wiley first among the five candidates he listed for mayor.“I found it pretty intuitive,” Mr. Wilkes said. More