Voting booths are set up at a 2018 Minnesota primary election polling place inside the Westminster Presbyterian Church on August 14, 2018 in Minneapolis.
"Imagine: what if today, instead of being consigned to the shadows, the more than 22 million noncitizen immigrants in the US were heading to the polls? Sound preposterous? Voting by non-citizens is actually as old America itself. From the founding of the American Republic, voting rights were determined not by citizenship but by other criteria, such as race, gender, and property holdings. When women, post-emancipation African Americans, and poor white men were denied voting rights, it was due to elite antipathy — not because they lacked citizenship. Non-citizens in those years picked electoral winners and losers, and even held political office. What brought this period of 'alien suffrage' to a close was simple nativism. ..."
Jacobin
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