Could a US state allow non-citizens to vote in presidential elections? On July 30th [2020], President Trump suggested in a tweet that the US presidential election should be delayed due to COVID impeding in-person voting. Every news article I've read since (Vox, Slate, Washington Post) claims that the President does not have this power, but that state legislatures are able to decide how their electoral college electors are selected, and a (presumably Republican controlled) state legislature could decide to simply appoint electors of their choosing. The Vox article states that the SCOTUS Bush v. Gore decision reiterated this ability, saying that the state legislature &quot;may, if it so chooses, select the electors itself&quot;. Given this wide latitude to determine how the electors are appointed, could a state decide to appoint its electors on the basis of a statewide vote in which non-citizens are also permitted to vote? Initially the answer appears to be &quot;no&quot;, on the basis of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. However, that act states: (a) It shall be unlawful for any alien to vote in any election held solely or in part for the purpose of electing a candidate for the office of President, Vice President, Presidential elector, Member of the Senate, Member of the House of Representatives, Delegate from the District of Columbia, or Resident Commissioner However, I don't believe the act prohibits states from taking into account such votes. The voter would run the risk of criminal penalties, but the state could contrive to avoid this. For example, every eligible (by whatever criteria the state decided) voter could be mailed a difficult-to-forge token shortly before election day. In-person voting would require you to present and relinquish your token, but no attempt would be made to identify you or record your identity. This would make double-voting hard, while preventing determination of who has voted. Alternatively, could a state assign electors by a process that would produce a statistically similar result to an election, but is not actually an election? For example, surveying 10% of the state's eligible (again, by whatever criteria the state decides) population and assigning the electors to the plurality winner of the survey. Obviously this is all hypothetical, since the table here shows that every state has language restricting voting to citizens. I'm just wondering what options exist. Edit: I have modified this question to remove the reference to New Hampshire not having a citizenship requirement for voting, since it does - my error was based on a partial quote. Thanks to @JustAGuy for providing a link to the full text.
Yes, states could allow aliens to vote for President. As ohwilleke says, the Constitution gives the states control over who can vote. In fact, for much of our history, many states allowed aliens to vote. To the extent that 18 U.S.C. § 611, which forbids aliens from voting for President, contradicts that power, it is unconstitutional. If 18 U.S.C. § 611 is so obviously unconstitutional, why is it still on the books? Mostly because 18 U.S.C. § 611 is purely symbolic. It literally has had no effect on who can vote in the US. As noted above, throughout the 19th and early 20th century, many states allowed aliens to vote. But with the turn against immigration in the early 20th century, states that had allowed aliens to vote explicitly revoked that privilege. The last state to prohibit aliens from voting was Arkansas, in 1926. Thus, for almost a century, every state has prohibited aliens from voting in state elections, so no voter was affected by the passage of 18 U.S.C. § 611. (For a survey of the history of alien suffrage, see here.) Voting is a state matter: It is widely agreed that the Qualifications Clause, Art I, § 2.1 of the Constitution gives states control over who votes in federal elections, (subject, of course, to other constitutional requirements, such the 15th, 19th and 26th Amendments). The clause says the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature. In other words, anyone who is qualified to vote for the largest branch of the state legislature is qualified to vote for President. (The original text only talked about elections to the House because Senators were chosen by state legislatures, not voters. When this was changed by 17th Amendment, that Amendment repeated this qualification for voters.)(For more extended, but reader friendly, discussion of these issues see here. People sometimes point to the &quot;Elections Clause,&quot; Art. I, § 4.1, as giving Congress power over voter qualifications. That clause gives Congress the power to regulate the &quot;Times, Places and Manners of holding elections.&quot; They read, &quot;Manners of holding elections” to include the qualifications for voting. This reading of the Elections Clause is inconsistent with several of the sources of constitutional authority Americans typically consult, including the text, the intent of the Founder and precedent. All of these support the “Qualifications Clause” reading of the Constitution. 1) Constitutional Text: Reading the Elections Clause as giving Congress control over voter qualifications, renders the Qualifications Clause almost completely meaningless. Yet everyone agrees the Constitution should be read so that all its parts mean something – no part should be rendered superfluous. 2) Intent of the Founders: When the Founders debated voting qualifications, they were clearly worried that politicians would manipulate the electoral rules to favor them. The Founders believed the Qualifications Clause kept both national and state politicians from stacking the electoral deck. First, by giving the power of deciding who could vote to the states, the Clause prevented national politicians from choosing their own electorate. Secondly, by requiring the states to use the same qualifications for voters in state and national elections, the Clause prevented state politicians from manipulating the rules in national elections. As for the Electoral Clause, in Federalist 60, Hamilton was clear who controlled voter qualifications: “The qualifications of the persons who may choose or be chosen…are unalterable by the [federal] legislature…” 3) Precedent and practice: For most of our history, people acted consistently with Hamilton’s statement. They tolerated a wide variation in who was allowed to vote across states. As noted above, many of those states specifically allowed aliens to vote. (And, starting in 1787 with the passage of the Northwest Ordinance, Congress passed a series of laws allowing aliens to vote in territories.) When Americans did make nationwide changes to voting qualifications, they did so by amending the Constitution, as when they prohibited discrimination in voting by race, sex or age. There are only a handful of Supreme Court decisions involving federal control over voting qualifications. In 1970, in Oregon v. Mitchell, the Supreme Court upheld a federal law changing the voting age to 18. The opinion of the Court, written by Justice Black, relied on the Elections Clause to say that Congress had the power to change voting requirements. None of the other Justices shared Black's views on the Elections Clause. Instead, they agreed with Justice Harlan, who said, “nothing” in the Constitution, “lends itself to the view that voting qualifications in federal elections are to be set by Congress.” (These Justices used the Equal Protection Clause as the basis for federal control over voter qualifications.) Since then, no Justice has followed Justice Black. Instead, they have followed Justice Harlan. For example, in 2013, in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council Justice Scalia, (in an opinion joined by Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan, Kennedy, Roberts, and Sotomayor) said, “the Elections Clause empowers Congress to regulate how federal elections are held, but not who may vote in them.” From this evidence, I’d say you were right to be puzzled about the constitutional authority for the IIRIRA. A federal law preventing aliens from voting in federal elections undermines the text of the constitution by rendering the Qualifications Clause superfluous, goes against the clear intent of the Founders, and is inconsistent with 200+ years of history and precedent. It only survives because it has no practical effect on voting in the US. Since this situation seems unlikely to change soon, it seems likely the statute will remain on the books to confuse Americans for the foreseeable future. Edited to add: Could states count alien votes under the IIRIRA? No: Under the IIRIRA, there can't be any alien votes to count! § 611(a)(3) of the IIRIRA says aliens can only vote in an election if they do not have &quot;an opportunity to vote for a candidate for any one or more of such Federal offices.&quot; You ask whether &quot;non-vote&quot; methods of measuring alien's opinions, such as surveys, are legal under the IIRIRA. These clearly violate the purpose of the IIRIRA, which is to prevent aliens' opinions from influencing the outcome of federal elections. But it's not clear they violate the IIRIRA as written. They only violate the IIRIRA if you are willing to apply the &quot;familiar rule&quot; that a thing may be within the letter of the statute and yet not within the statute, because not within its spirit nor within the intention of its makers. But in real life, these questions are irrelevant. As a practical matter, they would never come up. If a state really wanted to allow aliens to vote, it would challenge the constitutionality of the IIRIRA. That no state has done this means no state politicians want to be seen advocating for alien voting. The IIRIRA is like the proverbial law &quot;requiring you to breathe:&quot; You follow it, not b/c it's the law, but because that's what you were going to do anyway.
[C]an this decision really be used as legal precedent for birthright citizenship for tourists and illegal immigrants? Yes. If the case did not depend on the fact that they were lawfully resident in the US, then it would apply to those who are not lawfully present in the US. For the case to apply to some people but not others, there must be a distinguishing difference that is relevant to the analysis of the case. The question then is whether lawful residence is a distinguishing difference here, and it seems that no court has ruled on the question. Referring to current events, it would be possible for the executive branch to assert that the 14th amendment does not grant citizenship to one born in the US of parents who were not lawfully present. This would end up in court. For example, such a person could sue to compel the government to issue a passport, or, if the government sought to deport such a person, the person could assert US citizenship in deportation proceedings. At that point, the court would have to rule on the question, whereupon it would almost certainly rule that the 14th amendment does grant such citizenship. See, for example, Plyler v. Doe, in which the court ruled that illegal immigrants in a state are within its jurisdiction for the purpose of the equal protection clause. It would be odd indeed for the court to rule that the same word means something different in the previous sentence. Furthermore, in a footnote, the court writes [W]e have had occasion to examine the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides that &quot;[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States. . . .&quot; ... [N]o plausible distinction with respect to Fourteenth Amendment &quot;jurisdiction&quot; can be drawn between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful. You ask: [H]ow is it that foreign diplomats' children born in United States do not have birthright to US citizenship because they are not &quot;subject to the jurisdiction thereof&quot; and children of tourists and illegal immigrants do have the birthright to US citizenship? Consider what happens when an illegal immigrant commits a crime in the territory of a US state: the person is subject to trial and punishment in the state's criminal justice system. A foreign diplomat who commits a crime, on the other hand, or indeed the child or other family member of a foreign diplomat, is immune from prosecution. That is what distinguishes diplomats from illegal aliens such that the first sentence of the 14th amendment applies to the latter, but not the former.
Generally, no. Legislatures pass laws. The fact that someone else knows more about the thing they're passing laws about is utterly irrelevant -- the power to make laws is given to the legislature, not to experts. If the legislature thinks experts should make the rules on something, they can delegate (this is why the FDA approves medicine rather than Congress), but the legislature of a state generally has the power to pass any law that is not unconstitutional. Your analogy to paper money is a poor one: that's a federalism thing, not an expertise thing. Congress has established a system of paper money, and states can't interfere with that. It's not that the Fed thinks paper money is good, it's that Congress said paper money shall be a thing. That could stop a state from banning an FDA-approved drug; however, since marijuana is illegal under federal law, it would be odd to conclude that banning it at the state level as well is preempted. Legislators aren't inherently experts on anything (except being elected). That doesn't matter. They have the authority to pass laws, even if those laws directly go against the views of people who are recognized experts in the area. You appear to think there must be a judicial remedy against bad policy. You would be wrong. The role of the courts is not to decide what policies are good or bad; they are concerned only with what is legal. Deciding what policies are good or bad is a matter for the democratically elected representatives of the people, or for the people themselves in states with ballot questions. It is not the job of the courts.
with the new movement by some states to require voters to have identification to vote, and the fact that no state I know of provides free government issued ID (unless you are an employee) it seems that unless a state provided its residents with free access to state-issued ID, that requiring people to go pay for ID's needed to vote would be contrary to the Twenty-Fourth Amendment. This specific issue (which is much easier to address than the general question) has been litigated, and in some cases, it has been a successful argument. It is pretty much acknowledged now that requiring a fee for all documents required in order to have ID necessary to vote violates the 24th Amendment. But, the states that enacted these requirements knew that and tried to get around it by making at least one form of voter ID free, which prevents the statutes from being facially invalid. This isn't the end of the question, however: Voter ID laws, enacted in 11 states over the past two years, require voters to show a government-issued photo ID that the state will provide for free. But while the ID is free, the documents residents need to prove their identity in order to get that ID, such as a birth certificate, are not. Now, lots of people already have documents like birth certificates that were purchased by their parents at their birth and are now available to them for free. But, that isn't always the case. This raises the question of whether there is an "as applied" violation of the 24th Amendment in the cases of someone who can't prove their entitlement to compliant voter ID without paying for it, and if so, what the proper remedy is for the violation. These issues are still being actively litigated and haven't been definitively resolved on a national basis in all circumstances.
Each state has its own election laws, so you will get 50 different answers depending on what state you are interested in (perhaps 49, since Washington doesn't have polling places - depends on what you mean by &quot;poll watcher&quot;). This page is a starter list of legal resources. This page starts you on deconstructing this notion of &quot;poll watcher&quot;. Colorado is one state that explicitly allows partisan observers, here are the rules. No person is compelled to be an observer, so I don't understand who you think might be abusing a poll watcher. Perhaps you are referring to the possibility that an election official will prevent an observer from doing their job. Or perhaps you are thinking that being a poll watcher abuses the intent of some law. Whatever you have in mind, there are laws in each state that say what is allowed and what is forbidden, so you have to address this at a local level. No state has a requirement that observers must come from or swear allegiance to the majority party of that polling jurisdiction (e.g. county, or precinct). Any attempt by election officials, or anyone else, to block observers from the minority party would be rebuffed by the courts. The courts will not attempt to divine inner motivations for sending an observer. Most states allow partisan observers. Michigan distinguishes &quot;challengers&quot; and &quot;poll watchers&quot;, and there are distinct rules and powers for the two sets. A crucial difference is that a watcher cannot legally challenge a claimed right to vote or a precinct board action, but a challenger can. There are rules of conduct imposed on both kinds of observers, one of them being that you cannot challenge a voter for the purpose of annoying or delaying the voter. This is a misdemeanor (a crime) under MCL 168.727, and as a criminal prohibition, the state would have to prove intent beyond reasonable doubt. Blog posts by the observer might provide sufficient evidence, but speculation by the majority party would not.
There's no settled legal answer to this, but there seems to be a general consensus that this would not be legal under the Impeachment Clause, which says: The President ... shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment. There would be two main issues here: 1. Can a president pardon himself? It's never been tried, so it's never been challenged, so the courts have never had a chance to say whether it's legal. The main argument in favor of self-pardons is that the constitution grants broad pardon authority for any offense against the United States, making an exception for impeachment, but not for self-pardons. The response to that is that the constitution uses all kinds of broad language that everyone agrees is not as broad as it sounds; Congress is not allowed to abridge the freedom of speech, but perjury laws are nonetheless constitutional. There are several theories as to why the self-pardon would be illegal, but they mostly come down to two main ideas -- that our legal system does not permit anyone to be the arbiter of their own case, and that a person subject to impeachment may not be pardoned. 2. Can a president issue secret pardons? Again, it's never been tried, so it's never been challenged, so the courts have never had a chance to say whether it's legal. And again, the primary argument in favor of secret pardons is that the Pardon Clause grants broad pardon authority without requiring that pardons be publicized. The main arguments against are (1) that presidential pardons are inherently public acts, as they have no effect if the justice system doesn't know about them, and (2) that the Presidential Records Act requires official White House records to be transferred to the National Archives.
Only for certain parts of the constitution, and not for the parts you are asking about. Accordingly, the Supreme Court has squarely stated that neither the First Amendment nor the Fifth Amendment "acknowledges any distinction between citizens and resident aliens."13 For more than a century, the Court has recognized that the Equal Protection Clause is "universal in [its] application, to all persons within the territorial jurisdiction, without regard to differences of ... nationality."14 The Court has repeatedly stated that "the Due Process Clause applies to all 'persons' within the United States, including aliens, whether their presence here is lawful, unlawful, temporary, or permanent."15 When noncitizens, no matter what their status, are tried for crimes, they are entitled to all of the rights that attach to the criminal process, without any distinction based on their nationality.16 Are Foreign Nationals Entitled to the Same Constitutional Rights As Citizens? - David Cole, Georgetown University Law Center
It's actually simpler than you might expect: If you intend to spend more than US$5000 (which is nearly certain) you must fill out and file a Federal Election Commission (FEC) Form 2. There are 50 states that you now need to consider getting on their ballots. There is no requirement that you register in all of them but if you don't then you may have trouble winning the required electoral majority. The problem here is that every state has its own requirements but usually it's gathering signatures as required in that state's regulations. This is where you need an &quot;organization&quot; of some sort to gather signatures and get you properly placed on the ballots in all 50 states of all of the states you think you need to be on. The above assumes that you meet the US Constitution's criteria for a President. To my knowledge, President Trump, while he has make some statements to that effect, has not officially filed any forms at the federal or state level for the next presidential election so far. But anyone can say or imply that they are running and they may be but until the forms are filed it's not official.