Right of Foreigners To Vote in The United States

The right of foreigners to vote in the United States has historically been a contentious issue. A foreigner, in this context, is a person who is not citizen of the United States.

Over 40 states or territories, including colonies before the Declaration of Independence, have at some time admitted aliens voting rights for some or all elections. In 1874, the Supreme Court in Minor v. Happersett noted that "citizenship has not in all cases been made a condition precedent to the enjoyment of the right of suffrage. Thus, in Missouri, persons of foreign birth, who have declared their intention to become citizens of the United States, may under certain circumstances vote."

By 1900, nearly one-half of the states and territories had some experience with voting by aliens, and for some the experience lasted more than half a century. At the turn of the twentieth century, anti-immigration feeling ran very high, and Alabama stopped allowing aliens to vote by way of a constitutional change in 1901; Colorado followed suit in 1902, Wisconsin in 1908, and Oregon in 1914. Just as the nationalism unleashed by the War of 1812 helped to reverse the alien suffrage policies inherited from the late eighteenth century, World War I caused a sweeping retreat from the progressive alien suffrage policies of the late nineteenth century. In 1918, Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota all changed their constitutions to purge alien suffrage, and Texas ended the practice of non-citizen voting in primary elections by statute. Indiana and Texas joined the trend in 1921, followed by Mississippi in 1924 and, finally, Arkansas in 1926. In 1931, political scientist Leon Aylsworth noted: "For the first time in over a hundred years, a national election was held in 1928 in which no alien in any state had the right to cast a vote for a candidate for any office -- national, state, or local."

Only U.S. citizens have the right to vote in federal elections, and it is a federal crime for a non-citizen to vote in a federal election or to register to vote in one. "Non-citizen voting has been extinct since Arkansas became the last state to ban it in 1926."