I just returned from a Portland (Maine) City Council Meeting where there was a proposal to send to referendum a measure to allow legal immigrants who are presently not citizens the right to vote in local elections only. Speaker after speaker, with few exceptions, ground through the following list of grievances dressed up as argument: white male privilege; the 200-plus-year-old document written by the slave-holding class of the aforementioned folks, aka The Constitution of the United States of America; Donald Trump’s tossing rolls of paper towels at Puerto Rican hurricane victims; diversity; inclusion; more diversity; more inclusion; democracy; more democracy; taxation without representation; immigrants’ rights to an unlimited list of privileges; my 12-year-old daughter thinks it’s a cool idea; people in Europe do it, so it must be a cool idea because everything they do is cool and inclusive and diverse. Do I need to continue?

So I patiently waited my turn (struggling intensely to maintain my composure). I get up to the mic and my three minutes starts. I begin by mentioning that two of my siblings have spouses who followed the prescribed process for becoming citizens to obtain their right to vote. I didn’t mention this in my comments, but in neither case, did I ever hear out of them (at least not in my presence) any sense of entitlement or resentment about the process. It’s bureaucratic and cumbersome and seemingly endless, but they did what they had to do to get the brass ring.

I then went on to explain the importance of following state law (even if it was written by white slave-holding males; no, I didn’t say that) in this matter since this law would conflict with the current state statute on voting, which requires citizenship for voting.

I then proceeded to the flaws in their “stakeholder” argument, in which they assert the need for the right to vote in local elections because they have children in the schools. I told those present:

Proponents of this measure also claim that non-citizens need the right to vote in order to satisfy their stakeholder claim in city services and institutions, such as the school board and the city council. Yet non-citizens already can exercise all sorts of First Amendment rights that allow them to redress grivances to elected officials, such as a school board or city council member, assemble peaceably against city policies, etc. Interestingly enough, the measure specifically excludes non-citizens from holding elective office in the city, all the while claiming civic participation as a reason for allowing them the right to vote in city elections, a seeming contradiction of their stated goal.

I then moved on to the artificial distinctions between legal vs. illegal immigrants and local vs. higher levels of government:

Another weakness in the proponents’ case is that all the reasons they cite for allowing non-citizen legal immigrants the right to vote also hold for illegal immigrants, who no doubt have the same stake in city governance as cited above. Moreover, the case for non-citizen participation would and should apply at the state and federal level, yet the advocates of non-citizen voting make no case for amending the state constitution to permit such an extension of this participation at those levels of government.

I closed with this:

Sadly the advocates of non-citizen voting have attempted to paint all opponents of this measure as bigots and nativists intent upon denying certain ethnic groups their full participation in the democratic process. Nothing could further from the truth: We welcome all (legal) newcomers from every corner of the earth to pursue U.S. citizenship and earn their right to vote through the naturalization process. It’s a tried and true process that ensures fealty to this great country and its first principles set forth in our Founding documents. We think it one worthy enough not to shortcut or sidestep for the sake of political expediency.

After I finished, as I was walking through the corridor, a young man stopped me to tell me how much he appreciated my testimony. He said that he was on the other side and disagreed, but he considered my arguments to be reasonable and not hate-filled or bigoted. He said that he wished his side would have refrained from that type of rhetoric, and it doesn’t help his cause. I thanked him and acknowledged that there were reasonable arguments to be made on the other side, particularly the stakeholder argument about living in the community and having kids in the schools. Unfortunately (for them), with this measure on the November ballot (and it will almost certainly pass this time around, given that it went down 52/48 in 2010), it will only incite the rest of more conservative voters in the state to come out to vote against state legislative candidates who would amend state law to allow for this.

Despite the feeling of hopelessness, at least there’s the consolation of that young man who still recognizes the importance of reasoned, thoughtful debate. It can’t be all that bad now, can it?

Update: Council puts off giving non-citizens right to vote in Portland municipal elections