TAKOMA PARK, Md. — When Ambroise Agosse volunteered in 2020 with a mayoral candidate’s marketing campaign right here, he confronted an uncommon hurdle: persuading his spouse to register to vote for the candidate.
“It wasn’t simple, she refused,” Agosse recalled, as a result of she apprehensive it will have an effect on her citizenship software. He immigrated to the USA from Benin, West Africa, in 2011, and have become a U.S. citizen in 2017. However on the time of the 2020 native election, his spouse was not.
Takoma Park has allowed noncitizens — together with lawful U.S. residents and immigrants within the nation illegally — to vote in local elections since 1993.
A metropolis of about 17,000 folks that borders Washington, D.C., on its western and southern sides, Takoma Park is liberal-leaning and declared itself a sanctuary metropolis for migrants in 1985. It was one of many first U.S. cities to permit residents who should not U.S. residents to vote in municipal elections. Town additionally extended municipal voting rights to 16- and 17-year-olds in 2013.
Within the early Nineteen Nineties, the town had a rising immigrant inhabitants concentrated in sure wards, which meant fewer voters in these areas. Residents who championed the thought of noncitizen voting hoped that giving them voting rights would improve their participation in civic points that have an effect on high quality of life.
That hasn’t occurred. Noncitizen voter turnout has been low. Some say they’re reluctant to vote due to worry it may negatively have an effect on immigration functions or as a result of sharing private info with governments may make them simply traceable for deportation. As Republican leaders have amplified claims about noncitizen voters on this 12 months’s election, we examined how Takoma Park began and manages its longtime noncitizen voting course of.
Takoma Park’s foreign-born inhabitants has grown from round 12% within the Eighties to 30% now, census data reveals. The U.S. Census Bureau does not collect information on the immigration standing of individuals born overseas.
In the course of the 2024 election cycle, Republican politicians have typically repeated unsubstantiated claims about Democrats registering noncitizens to vote in federal elections. Generally, Republicans point to the handful of U.S. cities that permit noncitizen voting in municipal elections as proof of what they baselessly say is a Democratic plot.
Home Speaker Mike Johnnson said in Might that noncitizen voting poses a “clear and current hazard to the integrity of our election system.” In September, Johnson said, “When you’ve got just a few thousand illegals take part within the election within the incorrect place, you’ll be able to change the make-up of Congress and you may have an effect on the presidential election.”
U.S. Home Republicans have launched payments to require proof of citizenship throughout voter registration; to cut federal election funding in locations the place noncitizens can vote in native elections; and to dam a brand new regulation that lets noncitizens vote within the District of Columbia’s native elections. The U.S. Home handed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, referred to as the SAVE Act, in July but it surely failed within the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Regardless of Republican claims, consultants have consistently said noncitizen voting in federal elections is rare, and in cases when it occurred, it couldn’t swing election outcomes.
A federal noncitizen voting ban already exists, making it a federal crime punishable by as much as one 12 months in jail. In Maryland, noncitizens who register to vote in state and federal elections face a prison sentence as much as 10 years. Offenders additionally threat deportation.
Proof reveals that noncitizen voting is “very low frequency and the system is fairly good at stopping it,” mentioned Walter Olson, senior fellow on the Cato Institute, a libertarian suppose tank.
“There doesn’t appear to be a big group of individuals attempting to do it within the first place.”
In Takoma Park, noncitizens have had municipal voting rights for 30 years, however only a few of them train that proper.
Olson instructed PolitiFact he understands the apprehension.
“You by no means know when some bureaucratic or federal company goes to get some info that’s ambiguous and mistake (somebody) for having voted in a federal election,” he mentioned. “With the excessive draw back, and the upside simply consisting of casting one vote in Takoma Park, I don’t blame folks in any respect.”
Takoma Park native ordinance prohibits metropolis officers from releasing “any info relating to the citizenship or immigration standing of any particular person to any third get together.”
Takoma Park’s voter roll contains U.S. residents, noncitizens and 16- and 17-year outdated residents.
To replace its voter roll, the town receives voter registration info on U.S. citizen residents from Maryland’s State Board of Elections. That company is answerable for registering voters for statewide and federal elections, that are open solely to U.S. residents. Sixteen- and 17-year-olds who’re U.S. residents could preregister for state and federal elections however can’t vote till they flip 18.
Takoma Park’s impartial municipal voter roll shouldn’t be transmitted to the state or federal authorities, in line with Jessie Carpenter, Takoma Park’s metropolis clerk.
“Our (metropolis) election is totally separate from the presidential election,” Carpenter instructed PolitiFact. The paper poll contains solely native candidates and the town has just one location for in-person voting on Election Day. Town additionally has common mail-in voting for municipal elections. To vote in federal and state elections, residents must go to a unique location on Election Day.
The native, state and federal elections “are on the identical day, however they don’t seem to be interrelated in any respect,” Carpenter mentioned. “So there isn’t any likelihood that somebody who’s registered for the aim of voting within the metropolis solely will even find yourself voting with the state as a result of their identify isn’t supplied to the state.”
From 1993 to 2017, the variety of noncitizens who voted in Takoma Park’s biannual municipal election peaked at 72 within the 2017 mayoral election, of two,520 votes solid, the newest 12 months for which the town has information, in line with data the town shared with PolitiFact. Town stopped accumulating information on noncitizens on its voter rolls after 2017, however Carpenter mentioned she believes registration by noncitizens was very low.
Low noncitizen voter turnout has additionally been the case in native elections within the few Vermont cities that permit it. In March 2024 native Vermont elections, 11 noncitizens voted in Winooski, 13 in Montpellier and 62 in Burlington, PBS reported. Within the District of Columbia, 115 noncitizens voted in June’s native election out of 378,821 complete registered voters, the capital’s Board of Elections mentioned.
Carpenter mentioned she didn’t know of any lively opposition to noncitizen voting in Takoma Park.
“I’ve not heard, from inside the metropolis, opposition to our regulation. I hear about it every so often from (folks) exterior the town however not from right here,” she mentioned. “I feel our residents are very accustomed to our processes and I feel it’s a effectively settled course of right here that’s not actually challenged regionally.”
Olson has turn out to be a extensively cited noncitizen voting skilled and debunker of false narratives about that cohort. However when his personal metropolis — Frederick, Maryland — was debating whether or not to permit noncitizen voting, Olson was a vocal opponent.
Frederick’s Board of Aldermen voted 4-1 in September in favor of permitting noncitizen voting, starting with 2025 native elections. Olson mentioned the present political local weather is one among many causes he opposed the measure.
“At a time when tens of millions of individuals imagine there’s a plot to steal American elections by inviting tens of millions of noncitizens to illegally vote in federal elections,” he mentioned, “you’re simply including gas for extra misunderstanding.”
Voters narrowly authorised Takoma Park’s noncitizen voting initiative in a 1991 referendum and the town council handed it in 1992.
Proponents of the marketing campaign, referred to as “Share the Vote,” hoped it will assist clear up the issue of low numbers of ballots solid in sure wards due to a excessive focus of immigrants in these locations. The marketing campaign’s leaders hoped that by giving noncitizens the fitting to vote, extra metropolis residents could be concerned in routine local government decisions about points corresponding to native parks and transportation.
However greater than 30 years later, even a few of the Share the Vote plan’s Nineteen Nineties architects say this has not occurred.
“The variety of registered noncitizen voters is small and they don’t seem to be decisive in any election,” mentioned George Leventhal, who co-chaired the Share the Vote marketing campaign with U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., earlier than Raskin was elected to Congress. “It has not had a profound or transformative impact on metropolis politics. A number of civically minded neighbors need to take part they usually do and that’s OK.”
Many noncitizens are afraid that voting may negatively have an effect on future immigration functions. They worry the federal authorities “could say they’ve accomplished one thing unlawful previously” by registering to vote and refuse their citizenship functions, Agosse mentioned.
The U.S. citizenship software form asks candidates to reply below penalty of perjury if they’ve voted in federal, state or native elections. It instructs candidates to reply “no” in circumstances the place noncitizens voted in native elections the place they’re allowed to. The query can be among the many most typical queries requested during the citizenship interview.
The worry is compounded for immigrants within the nation illegally who’re cautious of sharing info corresponding to addresses with governments, believing it could actually make them simply traceable for arrests and deportation.
“They’re scared that that is the way in which to place them in some system the place (immigration officers) can have entry to them,” Agosse mentioned.
A marketing campaign pamphlet educates Takoma Park residents about voter eligibility in native elections. (PolitiFact/Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu)
Agosse is operating in November for metropolis council to signify Ward 6, which has a excessive proportion of the town’s immigrant inhabitants. As nightfall fell on a latest night within the metropolis — a time when individuals are likelier to be at house — Agosse left his workplace with a stack of marketing campaign pamphlets for a spherical of door-to-door canvassing.
Moreover his marketing campaign guarantees, the pamphlets remind residents of voter registration eligibility necessities in 5 languages. With low turnout anticipated, each new voter reached issues on this election.
Whereas canvassing, Agosse met Valerie Doungue, a well being care employee from Cameroon who has lived in Takoma Park for eight years. Doungue mentioned she didn’t know she is eligible to vote in municipal elections, however she is hesitant due to a pending everlasting resident software. “If one thing is gonna occur (to my software), I’m not gonna do it,” she mentioned.
One other Takoma Park resident Agosse met, Emy Gonzalez, who turned a U.S. citizen three years in the past, mentioned, “Lots of people suppose that immigrants don’t pay any taxes. So long as you’ll be able to contribute to the economic system, they need to positively have a vote.”
For now, the unique aim of including noncitizen voters to carry extra folks right into a democratic course of has not materialized. If immigrants weren’t fearful, Agosse believes it will be a really completely different election.
“There (could be) no competitors. I’ll positively win with no query.”
This reality test was initially published by PolitiFact, which is a part of the Poynter Institute. See the sources for this reality test here.
