After the NYC City Council passed last month the bill allowing non-citizens to participate in certain local elections, Mayor Eric Adams allowed it to become law on Sunday giving around 800,000 non-citizens, including green card holders and DACA recipients, ability to vote.
According to the controversial measure, Adams allowed to be passed by the city council to go into law, the non-citizen New Yorkers may legally vote in city elections as of next year if they have lived in the city for at least a month.
According to the legislation known as “Our City, Our Vote”, undocumented immigrants are still unable to vote.
Although he expressed reservations with certain aspects of the bill, Adams did not choose to veto or otherwise challenge it, allowing New York City to become the first major US city to allow non-citizens to vote in local elections for the city’s mayor, borough presidents, comptroller, public advocate, and city council members.
NYC is by far the most populous to pass such a measure considering there are more than a dozen communities – including eleven towns in Maryland and two in Vermont- in the US that allows non-citizens to vote.
It is now up to the city Board of Elections to make a plan to implement the measure by July in order for non-citizens to vote in the 2023 city elections, and to create a functional voter registration system that will prevent non-citizens from voting in national and state elections.
Yet, some missteps are likely and expected considering the troubled history of the Board with much simpler issues such as sending the proper ballots to city residents during the elections in 2020.
Opponents of the legislation, according to The New York Times, are concerned that it would take power from citizens on top of discouraging people living in the US from seeking US citizenship.
Even former Mayor Bill de Blasio noted in December he had mixed feelings about the bill, stressing he wants to make sure that there’s a maximum incentive for non-citizens to finish the citizenship process.
Legally-documented voting-age non-citizens reportedly make up one in nine of New York’s 7 million adult residents.
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