New Yorkers will vote on a proposed amendment to the New York State Constitution this election, which supporters say would protect abortion access and opponents say would open the floodgates for noncitizen voting.
Proposition 1, or the Equal Rights Amendment, would bar discrimination in New York based on “ethnicity, natural origin, age, disability, creed or religion”; sex, including “sexual orientation, gender identity, [and] gender expression”; or “pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy.”
Opponents have claimed that the proposition is too open-ended and would result in allowing noncitizens to vote. Some polling has shown that conservative attacks on the proposal have had success, but neither side has been well-funded.
“It will advance the Democrats’ push for non-citizens to vote, and sanctuary state status for illegal aliens,” former representative and gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin Zeldin said at a press conference in September.
“It would put non-citizens and illegal immigrants on the same plan as citizens. It’s a trojan horse of epic proportions,” said Bobbie Anne Cox, a Westchester County-based attorney and an opponent of Proposition 1, in September. Her statements were picked up by the local news, including the New York Post and a Sinclair Broadcast Group journalist, whose article was syndicated and amplified with the headline: NY’s anti-discrimination ballot proposal could let illegal immigrants vote, attorney warns.
New Yorkers for Equal Rights, the group championing the ballot proposal, said in a statement to New York Focus: ”Voter citizenship qualifications are governed by a completely separate part of the New York State constitution. Anyone saying otherwise is trying to divide and distract voters from what Prop 1 is about: protecting abortion and preventing government discrimination, permanently.”
New York Focus spoke to three election law attorneys about the claims. All said the concerns about noncitizens voting are unfounded.
“Sounds like anti folks are conjuring up Halloween scenarios,” said Jerry Goldfeder, an attorney with the law firm Cozen O’Connor, who has 40 years of experience concentrating on election law and voting rights.
“What utter rubbish! That has no basis in law or the text of the proposition,” said Sarah Steiner, an election law attorney with her own firm.
David Imamura, an election law attorney with Abrams Fensterman, LLP, and member of the Westchester County Board of Legislators, agreed, saying there is “no scenario” in which the ballot proposition would allow noncitizens to vote.
“They’re taking isolated clauses and trying to make these sweeping generalizations in order to try to scare voters into not supporting it,” Imamura said.
It’s illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, with potential consequences of imprisonment or deportation. Available data shows it is rare. New York City’s noncitizen voting law, which would have allowed noncitizens to vote in local elections, was blocked by an appellate court in February. Steiner said Prop 1 has nothing to do with that case.
Fearmongering over noncitizens voting has been widespread this election, with Republicans across the country and at different levels of government repeating the claims.
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a Stetson University law professor and election law expert, said there’s a long history of demonizing foreigners over the threat that they would “take over” American elections, going back to the Anti-Chinese Exclusion Act and anti-Chinese xenophobia from Republican and Democratic parties.
“Xenophobia has clearly reared is ugly head again in the 2024 [election],” Torres-Spelliscy said. “There are often accusations of widespread noncitizen voting, like the false accusations made by Rudy Giuliani after 2020. He could never prove this because it wasn’t true.”
