As the first votes in the 2024 presidential race are cast, social media users are sharing misinformed claims about U.S. voting laws.
In one example, bright red text overlaid on a Dec. 18 Instagram video claimed, “Illegal immigrants now have the right to vote in New York.”
The video featured a Dec. 5 House Homeland Security Committee hearing and tied the claim to a New York City voting law.
“Mr. Blakeman, let me ask you a question,” Rep. Josh Brecheen, R-Okla., said during the hearing. “Can illegal immigrants in New York vote?”
Bruce Blakeman, county executive for Nassau County, New York, responded: “In New York City, I believe they passed a law. Luckily, we don’t have that law in Nassau County. But in the city council and mayoral races, I believe illegal aliens recently have been given the right to vote.”
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(Screenshot from Instagram.)
Blakeman’s comments in the clip misrepresented a New York City law that allowed noncitizens in the U.S. legally to vote in some municipal elections. The post’s claim that immigrants in the country illegally can vote in New York is wrong.
“There is no law allowing noncitizens to vote statewide in New York” or any other state, said Joshua Douglas, a professor at the University of Kentucky’s J. David Rosenberg College of Law who researches election law and voting rights.
Only citizens are permitted to vote in New York statewide elections
Under federal law, only U.S. citizens may vote in national elections.
Susan Lerner, the executive director of the voting rights group Common Cause New York, said that only U.S. citizens can vote in New York state.
In 2021, New York City lawmakers approved legislation that allowed about 800,000 noncitizen New York residents to vote in municipal elections, assuming they had lived in the city for 30 days and were legal permanent residents of the U.S. or had work authorization. This appears to be the law Blakeman referred to during the hearing.
The legislation neither allowed noncitizens to vote in statewide or federal elections, nor extended voting rights to immigrants in the country illegally.
“Permanent residents and people authorized to work here are documented and approved by the federal government,” Lerner said. “They pay state and federal taxes, and pay into Social Security as well. In many cases, they’ve lived in the United States for decades. There is nothing ‘illegal’ about them.”
The measure never took hold.
In June 2022, before the law could even take effect, a New York judge struck it down for violating the state constitution, which says that “every citizen” is entitled to vote. That decision is being appealed. Oral arguments were held in June, but no decision has been handed down.
“Even if the appeals court rules in favor of the city, allowing (New York City) to implement the law, again, it would only allow legal residents who are not U.S. citizens” to vote, said Ron Hayduk, a political science professor at San Francisco State University. It would not grant the right to vote to immigrants in New York illegally, as the post suggested.
Across the U.S., more than a dozen cities have taken steps to allow noncitizens to vote in some local elections, including some cities in California, Maryland and Vermont, Hayduk said. Noncitizen voting in elections is generally limited to municipal elections and is not widespread, however.
Furthermore, fraudulent voter registration or voting by noncitizens is rare and usually occurs as a result of a misunderstanding or mistake, such as a noncitizen accidentally registering to vote when applying for a driver’s license.
Our ruling
A video post claimed, “Illegal immigrants now have the right to vote in New York.”
Only U.S. citizens can vote in statewide and national elections in New York.
A 2021 law in New York City allowed about 800,000 noncitizens the right to vote in local elections, but a judge struck down that law in 2022 and it’s not in effect. Even if the measure were reinstated, it granted voting rights only to noncitizens who were legal permanent residents or had U.S. work authorization, not anyone in the country illegally.
We rate this claim False.
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