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Non-citizens voting in local elections

Should non-citizen residents be allowed to vote in local elections?

Information checked against its sources on October 20, 2026.

First drafted by Claude, an AI model. Edited and reviewed for balance by Leonard Dalenberg. How this site is written

Side A

No. Voting belongs to citizens.

Supporters of this side say the vote is the defining right of citizenship. People who want a say in how they are governed, they argue, should take the step of becoming citizens first.

  • It is what citizenship means. Handing the vote to people who have not made that commitment, they say, empties citizenship of meaning.
  • Washington goes furthest. Its 2022 law lets anyone 18 or older who has lived there 30 days vote for mayor and council, whether or not they are in the country legally.
  • Voters agree. Eight states wrote citizen-only voting into their constitutions in 2024, and such amendments have averaged 73 percent support since 2018. The House voted 266–148 to repeal Washington's law, with 56 Democrats in favor.
  • Two ballots invite mistakes. Non-citizens may not vote in federal races. Running separate rolls and ballots side by side, they warn, risks a federal agency mistaking a lawful local vote for an illegal federal one.

On this view a city should not hand its most basic decisions to people who have not joined the nation.

Side B

Yes. Let residents have a say locally.

Supporters of this side say local government is about the place where people live. Residents who pay its taxes, send children to its schools and live under its rules, they argue, should help choose who runs it.

  • No taxation without representation. Non-citizen residents pay local taxes and depend on local services, yet have no vote on how either is handled. Their children fill local classrooms, and they rely on local police and firefighters.
  • It is an old American practice. All thirteen original states let some non-citizens vote, and states allowed it in various forms until 1926.
  • It has worked where tried. Takoma Park, Maryland, has let non-citizens vote in city elections since 1993, on a separate city roll, with no operating problems reported.
  • The numbers are small. In Takoma Park's 2017 mayoral race, non-citizens cast 72 of 2,520 votes. Some stay away for fear that voting could harm their immigration cases.

On this view, city decisions belong to everyone who lives with them, while federal elections stay with citizens.

Other views

Factual review

What is established

  • Federal law bars non-citizens from voting in federal elections. It does not cover state and local elections, which are left to states and localities. Washington, D.C., and certain towns in California, Maryland and Vermont let non-citizens vote in some or all local elections.1
  • Washington's Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2022 lets residents 18 or older who have lived in the city 30 days vote for mayor, council, attorney general and neighborhood commissioners, regardless of immigration status. A federal court dismissed a challenge in March 2024 because the plaintiffs could not show personal harm. The House passed a repeal, 266–148, on June 10, 2025; it had not become law as of October 2026.2,3,4
  • Judicial Watch, using D.C. Board of Elections records, reported that 578 non-citizens voted in Washington's June 16, 2026 primary and special elections. When the group reported 113 non-citizens voting in the June 2024 “presidential primary,” the board called that misleading: their ballots listed only local races, and none voted for a federal office.4,5
  • New York City's 2021 law, covering an estimated 800,000 permanent residents, people authorized to work and DACA recipients, was struck down 6–1 by the state's Court of Appeals on March 20, 2025.6
  • Eighteen state constitutions explicitly bar non-citizen voting. Eight such amendments passed in 2024, and six more states vote on them in 2026. Historically, all thirteen original states allowed some non-citizen voting; the last statewide allowance ended in Arkansas in 1926.1,7
  • How often non-citizens vote illegally. Every count found so far is small. Election officials in 42 jurisdictions, chosen mostly for their large non-citizen populations, referred about 30 suspected cases among 23.5 million votes in 2016. Georgia's 2024 audit found 20 non-citizens among 8.2 million registered voters. Iowa found 277 registered, 35 of whom voted among 1.6 million ballots in 2024. Utah's 2026 audit of more than two million registrations confirmed 27 non-citizens, 13 of whom had voted since 2018. Texas referred 33 people who may have been non-citizens and voted in 2024 for investigation.8,9,10,11

What is disputed

  • Are the illegal-voting counts too low? Those who want stricter checks say officials find only what they look for, and that newer federal database checks are turning up more cases. Others note first counts often shrink on review: Iowa first flagged 2,176 names before confirming 277, and Utah's lieutenant governor said the federal data cannot by itself show someone is a non-citizen, because records for newly naturalized citizens lag.9,10
  • Do lawful local votes “cancel out” citizens? Critics of Washington's law say so. Its defenders reply that the votes are lawful under the city's law, and that any lawful vote offsets another.4
  • Does it draw people into civic life? Supporters expected it to. In Takoma Park, turnout among non-citizens has stayed low, and some say fear of immigration consequences keeps them away.12

Where it comes down to values

  • Who belongs. Is the right to vote earned by citizenship, or by living in and contributing to a community?
  • Taxes and representation. Does paying local taxes create a claim to a local vote?
  • Who decides. Should each city set its own rule, or should states and Congress set one for everyone?
  • Legal status. If non-citizens vote at all, should people in the country illegally be included?

Sources

  1. Ballotpedia News, “Signatures submitted for citizenship voting requirement ballot initiative in Alaska as three other states set to vote on similar measures in 2026,” Jan. 21, 2026. ballotpedia.org
  2. Democracy Docket, “Court Keeps Washington, D.C. Noncitizen Voting Law in Place Despite Right-Wing Challenge,” March 20, 2024. democracydocket.com
  3. Rep. Nick LaLota, “LaLota Votes to Prohibit Noncitizen Voting in D.C. Elections,” June 24, 2025. lalota.house.gov
  4. Judicial Watch, “578 Noncitizens Voted in DC's June 2026 Election,” Oct. 15, 2026. judicialwatch.org
  5. Lead Stories, “Fact Check: 113 Non-Citizens Did NOT Vote For President In DC June ‘2024 Presidential Primary,’” Aug. 2024. leadstories.com
  6. CBS New York, “NYC's non-citizen voting law struck down by New York's top court,” March 20, 2025. cbsnews.com
  7. Ballotpedia News, “Six citizenship voting measures on the ballot in 2026 continue historical trend,” July 8, 2026. ballotpedia.org
  8. Brennan Center for Justice, “Noncitizen Voting: The Missing Millions,” May 5, 2017. brennancenter.org
  9. Bipartisan Policy Center, “Four Things to Know about Noncitizen Voting.” bipartisanpolicy.org Associated Press, “Iowa review finds 35 noncitizens voted last fall,” March 20, 2025. yahoo.com
  10. Democracy Docket, “Non-citizen voting: Utah finds just 13 invalid ballots out of millions cast,” May 28, 2026. democracydocket.com
  11. Texas Secretary of State, news release, June 5, 2025. sos.state.tx.us
  12. PolitiFact, “A Maryland city has let noncitizens vote in local elections for three decades,” Oct. 21, 2024. politifact.com

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