Texas History
THE HISTORY OF IMMIGRANT VOTING RIGHTS IN TEXAS
The Immigrant Voting Project and
New York University Law Students for Human Rights
Resident Noncitizen Voting in Texas:
A History
The Texas Constitution of 1845, adopted upon Texas’s admission to statehood, provided that: “Every free male person who shall have attained the age of twenty-one years, and who shall be a citizen of the United States, or who is at the time of the adoption by the Congress of the United States a citizen of the republic of Texas, and shall have resided in this State one year next preceding an election, and the last six months within the district, county, city or town in which he offers to vote, (Indians not taxed, Africans and descendents of Africans excepted,) shall be deemed a qualified elector…. All free male persons over the age of twenty-one years, (Indians not taxed, Africans and descendents of Africans excepted,) who shall have resided six months in Texas, immediately preceding the acceptance of this constitution by the Congress of the United States, shall be deemed qualified electors.” [1]
Like several other southern states, Texas formally adopted declarant alien voting during the Reconstruction era. The Texas Constitution of 1868 provided that: “Every free male person who shall have attained the age of twenty-one years, and who shall be (or who shall have declared his intention to become) a citizen of the United States, or who is at the time of the acceptance of this constitution by Congress a citizen of Texas, and shall have resided in this State one year next preceding an election, and the last six months within the district or county in which he offers to vote, and is duly registered (Indians not taxed excepted,) shall be deemed a qualified elector.” [2]
The Constitution of 1876 retained declarant alien voting, providing suffrage to “every male person of foreign birth [not subject to a list of disqualifications] who, at any time before an election, shall have declared his intentions to become a citizen of the United States, in accordance with the Federal naturalization laws, … shall also be deemed a qualified elector.” [3] In 1896 the declarant alien voting provision was amended to require a declaration of intent to naturalize not less than six months before the election.[4] As late as 1916, a Texas appellate court reprimanded officials in Bee county for wrongly denying the vote to declarant aliens during an election over a county-wide prohibition on liquor; the election officials had announced that “no man not born in the United States would be allowed to vote unless he had his final naturalization papers, and that it would be necessary for him to produce them in order to be entitled to vote.”[5]
In 1919, amid the uproar over women’s suffrage, Texas Governor Hobby submitted, and Texas legislators passed, a resolution recommending the amendment of the Texas State Constitution to allow women to vote and to deny the vote to immigrants until they had been fully naturalized. Texas voters, however, defeated the proposal. When the U.S. Congress passed the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution weeks later, Texas quickly ratified it. A movement to change the Texas election code to strike down alien suffrage succeeded in 1921.
Texas amended its Constitution to eliminate declarant alien voting in 1921, at the same time that it formally enfranchised women in its Constitution.[6] The current version of the Constitution provides that: “Every person subject to none of the disqualifications provided by Section 1 of this article or by a law enacted under that section who is a citizen of the United States and who is a resident of this state shall be deemed a qualified voter.” [7]
The issue was revived in 1995, when Dallas State Rep. Roberto Alonzo introduced a bill,Texas H.B. 2816 (1995), to allow communities to decide whether to allow non-citizen immigrants to vote in local elections. The bill foundered in committee.
Click here for additional information from Suffrage Universel on Texas immigrant voting rights in history.
Click here for information on contemporary immigrant voting rights in Texas.
References
[1] TEXAS ConstITUTION of 1845, Art. III, §1-2. Reproduced in 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 Vol. VI, 3549 (1909).
[2] TX Const. of 1868, Art. III, § 1. Reproduced in 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 Vol. VI, 3572 (1909).
[3] TX Const. of 1876, Art. VI, § 1. Reproduced in 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 Vol. VI, 3642-3643 (1909).
[4] Tx. Const. of 1876, as amended 1896. Reproduced in 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 Vol. VI, 3672 (1909).
[5] Marsden v. Troy, 189 S.W. 960, 961 (Tex. Civ. App. 1916).
[6] Commentary in Vernon’s Ann.Texas Const. Art. 6, § 2.
[7] Vernon’s Ann.Texas Const. Art. 6, § 2.