Oregon History

The Immigrant Voting Project and
New York University Law Students for Human Rights

Resident Noncitizen Voting in Oregon:
A History

The U.S. Congress established the Territory of Oregon in 1848.  The congressional act allowed Oregon to enfranchise declarant aliens, providing that the territorial legislature could set its own voter qualifications as long as: 

“[T]he right of suffrage and of holding office shall be exercised only by citizens of the United States above the age of twenty-one years, and those above that age who shall have declared, on oath, their intention to become such, and shall have taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States and the provisions of this act.[1]

In its first Constitution of 1857, Oregon enacted a declarant alien suffrage article, providing that, “In all elections not otherwise provided for by this constitution, every white male citizen of the United States, of the age of twenty-one years and upwards, who shall have resided in the State during the six months immediately preceding such election, and every white male of foreign birth, of the age of twenty-one years and upwards, who shall have resided in the United States one year, and shall have resided in this State during the six months immediately preceding such election, and shall have declared his intention to become a citizen of the United States one year preceding such election, conformably to the laws of the United States on the subject of naturalization, shall be entitled to vote at all elections authorized by law.”[2]  The Constitution went on, however, to specifically disenfranchise non-whites, providing that, “No negro, Chinaman, or mulatto shall have the right of suffrage.”[3]

Anti-immigration feelings rose at the beginning of the twentieth century and World War I, resulting in the removal of alien suffrage in Oregon in 1914.[4] This trend can be seen in the Court’s opinion in McKay v. Campbell where the Court noted “the ruling in this case, would exclude from the privilege of voting quite a number of persons of mixed blood–persons whose fathers were British subjects, and mothers, Indian women–who have heretofore often, if not uniformly been allowed to vote in this state. They have done so by common consent, and under the authority of a vague public opinion that these persons by remaining south of the forty-ninth parallel after the treaty of 1846, could, and thereby did, elect to become American citizens. But ‘public opinion is not any authority on a point of law;’ and it appears in this instance as in others, ‘that common consent is sometimes a common error.’ The remedy, if any is deemed necessary, is with the legislature, and not the courts.”[5]

The current Constitution provides that, “Every citizen of the United States is entitled to vote in all elections not otherwise provided for by this Constitution if such citizen” meets age, residency, and registration requirements.[6]  In all school district elections, “every citizen of the United States of the age of twenty-one years and upward who shall have resided in the school district during the six months immediately preceding such election, and who shall be duly registered prior to such election in the manner provided by law, shall be entitled to vote, provided such citizen is able to read and write the English language.”[7]