can obtain vouchers and assign them to eligible campaigns. This includes lawful permanent residents, or “green card holders,” but excludes undocumented immigrants and lawful immigrants without green cards, such as people on employment-based visas, student visas, and investor visas or other conditional resident visas. See § 2.04.620(B) (allowing participation by those “eligible under federal law to donate to a political campaign”). In 2015, Seattle voters passed an initiative to raise property taxes to fund a program that periodically distributes “Democracy Vouchers,” totaling $100 each, to Seattle residents. The court’s decision not only left the door open to programs for expanding civic engagement and encouraging political speech from immigrants, but also implicitly endorsed a more community-oriented vision of democracy, providing a further example of the power of local governments to give noncitizens the political voice they often lack at the federal level. the Washington Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the program over a challenge by two Seattle property owners who argued the program violated their First Amendment rights as a “compelled subsidy of political speech.” 7 × 7.
citizens or lawful permanent residents to donate to candidates for local office with publicly funded vouchers, fits within this broader trend. Seattle’s Democracy Voucher Program, which allows adult Seattle residents who are U.S. Cambridge and three other cities in Massachusetts have passed measures to allow noncitizens to vote, but they have not gone into effect because they require state approval. Jamie Halper, Council Considers Allowing Noncitizens to Vote in Municipal Elections, Boston Globe (July 10, 2018, 3:11 PM). Municipalities including, most notably, Chicago and San Francisco have extended various levels of voting rights to noncitizens, while Boston has considered a similar measure.
Cohen, Letting Noncitizens Vote in the Trump Era, The Nation (Nov. including access to democratic participation. 1051, 1056–57 (2019) Dakota Smith et al., California Hits Back as Trump Threatens to “Dump” Immigrants in “Sanctuary Cities ,” L.A. See Karla Mari McKanders, Immigration to Blue Cities in Red States: The Battleground Between Sanctuary and Exclusion, 21 U. Consider, for example, the rise of sanctuary cities. municipalities have taken the lead in seeking to increase protections for the rights of these immigrants, 2 × 2. 2017), (noting in particular President Trump’s Muslim ban, his decision to cancel the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and end Temporary Protected Status for a number of countries, and declines in admissions of refugees). See, e.g., Sarah Pierce & Andrew Selee, Migration Pol’y Inst., Immigration Under Trump: A Review of Policy Shifts in the Year Since the Election 3–6, 8 (Dec. As the federal government removes immigrants’ access to services and protections, 1 × 1.