Election Reform
Related: About this forumCLEARLY NON-CITIZENS SHOULD NOT VOTE
but the burden has to be on the state to prove that the person IS NOT a citizen. If the person has a local address, membership in any civic org, etc., etc., etc. ANY OF THESE or multiple IDs can be given IF NECESSARY as proof of citizenship. But they should be assumed to be citizens unless there is GOOD REASON TO SUSPECT OTHERWISE.
If a non-citizen is found to have voted, knowing that it was illegal to do so, he or she should be punished with jail time.
But if a politician or state official PREVENTS even one citizen from voting that he knew or should have known was qualified to vote, that politician or state official SHOULD RECEIVE A JAIL TERM AS WELL and the amount of jail time should be in accord with how many legal voters he actually prevented from voting. Some time in the slammer would do wonders for their patriotism and their commitment to democracy. A lifetime in jail for the likes of Kris Kobach of KS does not seem to me to be an unreasonable sentence. If anything deserves a mandatory minimum it's preventing legal voters from voting.
eridani
(51,907 posts)--certainly don't want their names in one more government computer. When someone that I'm trying to register to vote says "We don't live here--we're just cleaning it for them," I can take a hind.
Land Shark
(6,346 posts)For the most part, this was frontier states which promised the right to vote for all males, citizens or not, and sometimes females, as a way to attract settlers and economic development.
Also, in some municipalities today, non-citizens do vote.
It makes a significant amount of sense because the "consent of the governed" doesn't seem to be limited to citizens and jndeed, in many ways, non-citizens (and felons) are HIGHLY governed and thus the case for rights of representation is arguably stronger than with regular citizens.
I do understand that citizenship entails duties and responsibilities and voting can be seen as a tradeoff for those duties. I'm not looking for a debate on this, just want to make a point of information that it hasn't been obvious to past states that only citizens should vote, and not obvious to every municipality in our country today, some of whom do have legal noncitizen voting.
Nor does everyone have to register to vote ahead of.time or at the polls. North Dakota has no voter registration requirement today. (They have some ID required however)