Professor Hayduk Discusses Non-Citizen Voting in U.S.

LAKE NORMAN REVIEW (MOORSEVILLE), NORTH CAROLINA)/WASHINGTON TIMES -- Going back to the nation’s founding, as many as 40 states or territories have allowed noncitizen voting, according to Ron Hayduk, a political scientist at San Francisco State University. During the country’s early years, being a male property holder was a more important question than citizenship status, Mr. Hayduk said. The reasons the practice faded vary, Mr. Hayduk said. In New England, fears of French radicals escaping the French Revolution prompted a crackdown. The War of 1812 saw another rollback, as did the surge of immigration from southern and eastern European countries around the dawn of the 20th century. “It really does boil down to these questions around who’s considered a member, a legitimate member of the polity,” he said. Mr. Hayduk and Stanley Renshon, a political science professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center, said the push for noncitizen voting comes and goes — though Mr. Renshon said the places that are experimenting with it do tend to be liberal bastions.