The Missouri state Senate has approved a constitutional amendment to ban non-U.S. citizens from voting.
Senate Joint Resolution 78 also would ban ranked-choice voting in the state except for St. Louis, which already uses the method. If the resolution is passed by the Missouri House, the amendment will be on the November general election ballot.
If it does end up on the ballot, Missouri will be the seventh state to have such an amendment put before voters this fall. The amendment would change one word in the state constitution. Instead of saying “All citizens of the United States” can vote, it would say “Only citizens of the United States.”
Paul Jacob is president of the Americans for Citizens Voting PAC. ACV is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to helping citizens pass such amendments. He said the public seems to be very strongly against the idea of allowing non-citizens vote in elections.
“We have a system in which an American citizen has power with their vote,” Jacob told The St. Louis Record. “You get to vote if you’re a citizen. If you open it up so others can vote, you lessen what citizenship means.”
The amendment would make it so only American citizens over the age of 18 who reside in Missouri are allowed to vote.
Jacob said his organization has no official stance on the ranked-choice voting aspect of the amendment.
Earlier this month, South Carolina lawmakers passed a bill putting the issue on this fall’s general election ballot. And in March, Idaho lawmakers passed a similar measure to join Iowa, Kentucky and Wisconsin whose voters will have similar measures on the ballot this November.
In recent years, city councils in New York, Washington and three cities in Vermont have voted to legalize foreign citizen voting. They join cities in California, Illinois and Maryland that, because of a loophole in their state constitutions, also allow foreign citizens to vote.
“Most state constitutions do not specifically prohibit foreign citizen voting,” AVC President Ava McCullah recently said. “Many people, even legislators, are unaware of this fact.”
If approved by voters, North Carolina – as well as South Carolina, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky and Wisconsin – will join 11 states whose constitutions already reserve the right to vote for only citizens of the United States. In recent years, the following states have passed these amendments: Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Ohio and North Dakota. In addition to Missouri, similar efforts are under way in Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas and West Virginia.
And a delegate in the Virginia General Assembly introduced legislation earlier this year that would require Virginia residents to prove U.S. citizenship when registering to vote by providing a birth certificate, passport or naturalization documents.
In March, West Virginia Governor Jim Justice and state Senate President Craig Blair said they wanted to see the issue on the agenda for a planned special session after the legislation stalled during the regular session. But when the special session call was released last week, the matter was not included on the agenda.
And federal Republican lawmakers are working on a bill called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote.