State Histories
HISTORY OF IMMIGRANT VOTING ACROSS THE UNITED STATES
Forty states allowed noncitizens to vote in local, state and even federal elections from 1776-1926.
Noncitizen Voting Rights in the United States 1776-1926
| State | Time Period When Noncitizens Held Voting Rights |
| Alabama | 1868–1901 |
| Alaska | none |
| Arizona[i] | none |
| Arkansas[ii] | 1874–1926 |
| California | none |
| Colorado | 1876–1902 |
| Connecticut | 1776–1819 |
| Delaware | 1776–1831 |
| District of Columbia | none |
| Florida | 1868–1894 |
| Georgia | 1868–1877 |
| Hawaii | none |
| Idaho | 1863–1890 |
| Illinois | 1818–1848[iii] |
| Indiana | 1851–1921 |
| Iowa | none |
| Kansas | 1854–1918 |
| Kentucky[iv] | 1789–1799 |
| Louisiana | 1879– ? |
| Maine | none |
| Maryland | 1776–1851 for state and federal elections; six towns allow noncitizen voting in local elections.[v] |
| Massachusetts | 1780–1822 |
| Michigan | 1835–1894 |
| Minnesota | 1849–1896 |
| Mississippi | none |
| Missouri | 1865–1921 |
| Montana | 1864–1889[vi] |
| Nebraska | 1854–1918 |
| Nevada | 1848–1864 |
| New Hampshire | 1792–1814 |
| New Jersey | 1776–1820 |
| New Mexico | none |
| New York | 1776–1804 |
| North Carolina | 1704–1856 |
| North Dakota | 1861–1889/1909[vii] |
| Ohio | 1802–1851 |
| Oklahoma | 1850–1907 |
| Oregon | 1848–1914 |
| Pennsylvania | 1790–1838 |
| Rhode Island | 1762–1842 |
| South Carolina | 1790– ? |
| South Dakota | 1850–1918 |
| Tennessee | 1796–1834 |
| Texas | 1869–1921 |
| Utah | none |
| Vermont | 1767–1828 |
| Virginia | 1776–1818 |
| Washington | 1850– ? |
| West Virginia | none |
| Wisconsin | 1848–1908 |
| Wyoming | 1850–1899 |
Source: Ron Hayduk, Democracy For All: Restoring Immigrant Voting in the United States. Routledge, 2006. Pages 19-20.
This information builds upon and is adapted from the following sources: Marta Tienda, “Demography and the Social Contract,”Demography39, no. 4 (2002): 587–616; Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States(New York: Basic Books, 2000); Virginia Harper-Ho, “Noncitizen Voting Rights: The History, the Law and Current Prospects for Change,” Law and Inequality Journal, no. 18 (2000); Gerald L. Neuman, “‘We Are the People’: Alien Suffrage in German and American Perspective,”Michigan International Law13 (1992): 259; Jamin B. Raskin, “Legal Aliens, Local Citizens: The Historical, Constitutional, and Theoretical Meanings of Alien Suffrage,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review141 (1993): 1401ff.; Paul Kleppner, “Defining Citizenship: Immigration and the Struggle for Voting Rights in Antebellum America,” in Voting and the Spirit of American Democracy: Essays on the History of Voting and Voting Rights in America, ed. Donald W. Rogers and Christine Scriabine (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992); Gerald Rosberg, “Aliens and Equal Protection: Why Not the Right to Vote?” Michigan Law Review75 (April–May 1977): 1092–36; Kirk H. Porter, A History of Suffrage in the United States(1918; reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971); New York University Law Students for Human Rights;[1]Suffrage Universal, “Le droit de vote aux Etats-Unis (Voting Rights in the USA),” http://users.skynet.be/suffrage-universel/us/usvo.htm; and the Immigrant Voting Project, “Immigrant Voting Project: Democracy for All.”
Notes
[i]. Although the United States took possession of the territory, including present-day Arizona, following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, Arizona was not organized as a territory separate from New Mexico until 1863. During the territorial period, it appears that some noncitizens may have voted at the local level. Historian Lawrence Michael Fong explains that Anglo settlers in Arizona primarily feared the political power of a consolidated Mexican vote and, perhaps as a consequence, paid comparatively little attention to immigrant groups such as the Chinese. While Fong’s examination of the Pima County register for 1882 reveals that only one Chinese resident, Chan Tin-Wo, a naturalized citizen, voted, he concludes that it “appears that in Pima County there were no social or political barriers for Chinese who wished to participate in deciding county or municipal issues. Of course, one had to be able to speak the institutional language, English.” A handful of other Chinese immigrants registered to vote prior to the turn of the century, including one Cham Tin-Wo, who “cast the decisive vote in favor of a bond issue for the construction of Drachman School in the 1890s.” Although it is unclear whether those voting had naturalized, it is probable that at least some were noncitizens, given that the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 had called a halt to the naturalization of Chinese immigrants. New York University Law Students for Human Rights; Lawrence Michael Fong,“Sojourners and Settlers: The Chinese Experience in Arizona,”Journal of Arizona History21 (1980): 1–30.
[ii]. Although Arkansas’s Constitution of 1836 provided suffrage only to “free white male citizen[s] of the United States,” the postwar Constitution of 1874, in addition to enfranchising nonwhite men, allowed noncitizen men to vote, granting suffrage to every “male person who has declared his intention of becoming a citizen” of the United States and met the age and residency requirements. Arkansas Constitution of 1874, art. III, sec. 1.
[iii]. Noncitizens, who were present in 1848, were grandfathered in.
[iv]. In Cowan v. Prouse, 93 Ky. 1956 (1892), the Kentucky Court of Appeals permitted a noncitizen to vote in Christian County in the election of the clerk of the court. His vote had been challenged in a dispute over the outcome of the election, but the court did not disqualify him because he had declared his intent to become a citizen and had served in the armed forces, receiving an honorable discharge. He apparently had voted in previous elections. 93 Ky. at 167–68.
[v]. Since 1918, Barnesville has permitted noncitizens to vote; Martin’s Additions and Somerset have permitted noncitizens to vote since 1976; Takoma Park since 1992; and Garrett Park since 1999.
[vi]. Noncitizen voting was phased out over a five-year period after the enactment of the Constitution that prohibited it, so as to grandfather in declarant alien voters to achieve U.S. citizenship and thus retain their suffrage uninterrupted. The Montana Constitution read, “Every male person of the age of twenty-one years or over . . . [who] shall be a citizen of the United States. . . . Provided [t]hat nothing herein shall be construed to deprive any person of the right to vote who has such right at the time of the adoption of this constitution; Provided, that after the expiration of five years from the time of the adoption of this constitution no person except citizens of the United States shall have the right to vote.” Montana Constitution of 1889, art. IX, sec. 2. Reproduced in William F. Swindler, Sources and Documents of United States Constitutions, vol. 6 93 (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Oceana Publications, 1976).
[vii]. At some point before 1909, North Dakota amended its Constitution to remove the declarant alien provision. Francis Thorpe, The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters, and Other Organic Laws of the States, Territories, and Colonies Now or Heretofore Forming the United States of America(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1909) , 2895. Thorpe does not give a year for the amendment to the state’s constitution that eliminates the declarant alien provision.