Non-citizens should be allowed to vote. To not allow is to disrespect the very essence of New York City. Suddenly I am a single issue person against Bloomberg: I feel so strongly about this issue. This reminds me of Boston and the American revolution.
DFNYC endorsing Gifford Miller was a mistake. Anthony Weiner is a whiner. And I don't even know the guy, directly or indirectly.
Campaign 2005: Much At Stake For Immigrants (2005-09-01)
For the first 150 years after the founding of the nation, non-citizens voted and held public office: alderman, coroner, school board member. Yet the policy fell casualty to the anti-immigrant backlash of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
While many European countries have been allowing legal immigrants to vote for public offices for many decades, only a few municipalities in Maryland and Massachusetts allow non-citizens to vote for local affairs. Non-citizens in Chicago vote in school board election. New York had the same practice from the 1970s until 2002 when the school boards were disbanded.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said on his weekly radio program on WABC-AM in April of 2004 that he opposed giving legal immigrants who are not United States citizens the right to vote in New York City elections.
The mayor said that while he sympathized with the plight of immigrants, particularly those who pay taxes, he still believed that "the essence of citizenship is the right to vote, and you should go about becoming a citizen before you get the right to vote."
Gifford Miller and Anthony Weiner have said they agree. Fernando Ferrer and Virginia Fields say they disagree, that non-citizens should be able to vote in local elections.
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