Winooski’s noncitizen voting expected to survive lawsuit
Vermont Judiciary
A lawsuit to stop Winooski’s charter change allowing any resident to vote — regardless of citizenship status — is expected to fail in county court. And if it does, GOP officials behind the suit say they may take it to the highest court in the state.
“I think we're expecting the same kind of thing to happen that happened in Montpelier,” Vermont Republican Party chair Paul Dame said. “We will need to appeal to the Supreme Court.”
The national and state arms of the Republican Party filed suit against Winooski and Montpelier last fall, arguing that charter changes in the two cities affording noncitizens the right to vote in local elections were unconstitutional. A Washington County judge dismissed the suit against Montpelier in April.
A motion hearing in the Winooski case is set for June 27 in Chittenden County Superior Court, where people on both sides of the lawsuit expect it to be dismissed.
Proponents of the charter change believe the Vermont Supreme Court will also dismiss it if the suit goes to that level.
“They're going to keep wasting dollars,” Winooski Mayor Kristine Lott said. “Tax dollars in the court system and the legal fees that the municipalities are going to have to pay for the lawyers that are fighting this frivolous lawsuit.”
But Republican officials don’t believe that’s the case.
“It's a constitutional question,” Dame said. “Constitutional questions get decided at the Supreme Court.”
The question refers to whether the state legislature has the authority to delegate voting rights to non-citizens. Vermont legislators approved the two cities’ charter changes last summer, overriding a veto from Gov. Phil Scott, according to VTDigger.
“Some things are retained by the Constitution, and some things are delegated to the legislature,” Dame said. “Citizenship is not a thing that was delegated.”
But the process to attain citizenship takes too long, argued state Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, D-Chittenden, who introduced the charter amendment to the Vermont Senate.
“For a resettled refugee, it is a minimum of five years,” Hinsdale said. “People who come here and go right to work on our dairy farms and on our apple orchards, they almost have zero path to citizenship.”
The path to citizenship for residents in Winooski has taken decades, said Lott. The mayor said the process is inaccessible, requires lawyers, and costs money. Some may never attain citizenship, she said.
Dame said that’s not necessarily true. His wife became a citizen in just four months.
“If you've got a criminal record in your previous country or there's other complicating factors, I can certainly understand that could take longer,” he said. “But my wife was a green card holder.”
Washington County Judge Robert Mello rejected the idea that U.S. citizenship is required to vote in local elections when dismissing the case against Montpelier in April, according to VTDigger. Mello ruled that U.S. citizenship is only required for state and federal elections. Voter requirements in local elections, he ruled, are set by state legislators.
Hinsdale and other advocates for all-resident voting believe the lawsuit has become a matter of voter disenfranchisement.
“It's sad to see Vermont Republicans take a page out of the same playbook as national Republicans,” Hinsdale said. “The national Republican playbook is all about suppressing the vote and particularly disenfranchising immigrants and people of color.”
Most people in Winooski who would be disenfranchised by a reversal of the charter change have children in school, she said, meaning none of these parents would have the ability to make decisions about their children’s education. She said that Republicans’ opposition to the measure, which would give more parents a say in school life, is hypocritical and rooted in xenophobia and racism.
But school voting in Vermont is not local, GOP officials said, and therefore cannot be a right given to noncitizens.
“When voters in Winooski vote on things like local school budgets, that vote is affecting other people outside of their municipality because of the way Vermont has structured its education funding formula,” Dame said.
Every school budget affects every other school budget in the state, Dame said. The charter change allows all-resident voting only on matters within the municipality, so schools should be out of play, he said.
The lawsuit and the debate surrounding it touches on a broader question for future elections: How do we determine what’s local?
Lott, the Winooski mayor, said the city is talking to the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office to determine which elected positions can be considered local.
“Our team is working to figure out how to implement it for the primary in August and the general election in the fall,” the mayor said.
Another challenge for the city — as long as the charter change stands — concerns how to let noncitizens know they now have this right.
“It takes a long time and work to actually share this information with folks who are newly getting the right to vote,” Lott said.
Lott said that Winooski officials have been doing so via cultural liaisons in schools and caseworkers in the community. She also hosted an info session ahead of Town Meeting Day highlighting what the charter change means and how to vote.
“I think the participation rate will just slowly increase over time,” she said.