Writes Zak Cheney-Rice, in "The Fear of Noncitizen Voting/For Trump, it is the death of America. For liberals, 'Woke 1' excess. Why is noncitizen voting so terrifying?" (New York Magazine).
August 28, 2026
"Through much of the 19th century, noncitizen voting expanded alongside U.S. territorial gains..."
"(the government offered the vote to Europeans who helped dispossess Indians and colonize the West). But in the mid- to late 1800s, immigrants started to become scapegoats for changes that native-born Americans saw as threatening.... Confederates banned immigrant suffrage during the Civil War because they thought migrating Europeans were anti-slavery, while northern states rolled back voting rights in reaction to waves of immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century, which they associated with crime. By 1926, no state let noncitizens vote in federal elections. In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, making noncitizen voting in federal elections a crime...."
Writes Zak Cheney-Rice, in "The Fear of Noncitizen Voting/For Trump, it is the death of America. For liberals, 'Woke 1' excess. Why is noncitizen voting so terrifying?" (New York Magazine).
Writes Zak Cheney-Rice, in "The Fear of Noncitizen Voting/For Trump, it is the death of America. For liberals, 'Woke 1' excess. Why is noncitizen voting so terrifying?" (New York Magazine).
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45 comments:
Beacause they arent legal and dont have that priviledge
Because citizens have more of a stake in the long-term ramifications of political choices than someone who can go back to the Old Country if things fall apart.
Foreigners voting in Federal elections has never been legal. If foreigners were allowed to vote in the 19th century its because the stakes were small and nobody really cared that much.
Now we do. Because we have millions of foreigners who have one foot in the USA and another in their home country. And the stakes are high. The Government now spends 40 percent of the GDP and regulates every aspect of our lives.
Anybody who has to ask that question has no business writing magazine articles about it.
As the saying goes, take the cotton out of your ears, put it in your mouth, and maybe you'll learn something.
The author is trying to conflate "Nobody cared enough to enforce the law very well" with "Approval".
So federal crimes are just irrational “fear”?
Surely even the thickest Prog sees the flaw in this line of reasoning.
I’m joking, natch. But they let the Sanctuary genie out of the bottle and will no doubt be surprised and outraged at the ways the idea will be used to foil their idiocy.
Terrifying? No. Fundamentally stupid? Yes. Why would any country allow foreign nationals, whether supportive or hostile, the authority to effect change on itself? I question the author's research and conclusions. In particular, the assignment of specific and simplified feelings to large groups of people (the north, the south) that have been dead and gone for a century-ish (assuming almost all Civil War observers died out by the '20s). Then he has the temerity to assign a feeling to me.
Interesting last name, Cheney-Rice. He is not doing much to burnished their reputation with this piece, assuming there is any relation to the politicos.
And outside of New Orleans and Texas the South had very little immigration before the civil war. It was mostly Anglo-Saxon with some Irish.
BTW, it seems to me that all the people who opposed immigration before the 1924 immigration act were completely correct. The sons and daughters of the sainted immigrants instead of being grateful for being let in, spent their entire lives trying to implement open borders and turn the USA into what it is today.
It's sort of trite, but I recall the line in Red Dawn when they execute the russian soldier
"Matt Eckert: Tell me what's the difference between us and them!!?
Jed Eckert: Because...we live here!"
To bad all those immigrants were such good liars. Maybe if they'd told the native born Americans that by letting them in, no one could ever limit immigation in the future, things would be different.
You don't want to betray your Grandmother by opposing immigration? Well maybe they should never have let your Grandmother in.
Because if you are not a citizen, you don't have skin in the game. I don't want people who may have other allegiances voting in our elections. Period. And I don't even like foreign-born citizens holding public office. Too many of them don't really understand what it is to BE an American and assimilate into our culture like countless generations before them did.
Wrong Clyde.
Many immigrants today who have voluntarily left their old worlds and assimilated here are more thoughtful and dedicated citizens than your own heirs.
Some things are just not (a) given...
We aren't expanding into new territory anymore. We now have a welfare state. The cost of transportation is much lower now so today's immigrants have less commitment to the new country. One side is trying to reshape the electorate.
It's like inviting strangers who you hire to fix your roof to decide what's for dinner and who's going to pay for it (not them!).
And all of those American citizens in every single state who voted for politicians to make sure that only American citizens (and presumably, residents of the states in question) are permitted to vote must have been motivated solely by bigotry. Right.
The point of this is to say "Ooopsie! Non-citizens (lots of them) have been voting (or being recorded as voting) and that is about to be revealed--bigly. It's no big deal though; what's the problem and why are you all such bigots?"
The biggest difference is that back then, everybody had to earn their own keep. Paying people for nothing is the rot in the system that encourages modern immigrants to be parasites, not equal partners. Who wants their dependents voting on how to take advantage of them?
Citizens have responsibilities as well as rights. Sharing resources with people who have one without the other can never be fair.
You could make the same argument about slavery - it was legal and not uncommon in the 19th century and not many people were all that bothered about it then. What's the big deal now?
Get rid of dual citizenship too. You are an American or you are not.
"Isn’t the whole point of citizenship that it determines who gets to vote?"
Well, no.
We don’t want nothing non-citizens voting any more than we want them deciding our foreign policy or whether we should fight a war. What is it about America first that is so hard to understand?
"Writes Zak Cheney-Rice."
Wow, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice had a love child?
I would like to thank the browser for adding extra words.
Just FYI - Zach Cheney Rice is married to Duffy Rice. To honor her, he calls himself "Cheney-rice". Duffy Rice is a Harvard Law Grad. So no, he's not the son of Dick Cheney and Susan Rice.
Here's some of his journalese picked at random:
"When armored trucks and riot officers stormed the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, in August — days after white Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson killed unarmed black 18-year-old Michael Brown"
It is not terrifying. It simply isn't representative democracy nor a republic. If you are not a citizen, then you shouldn't have representation as if you are a citizen nor the ability to determine the representation of the citizenry.
Taken to the extreme; voting non-citizens could vote to dissolve the existing government and constitution. Even not so extreme, they can vote in a manner that makes the citizenry as taxpayers essentially the slaves providing free labor and services to the non-citizens, see various demands to provide free healthcare to non-citizens.
Well according to ChatGPT some states did allow non-citizens to vote, including for presidential electors. But, that was a different world. As someone else has noted, there was no dole back then. And immigration meant you probably weren't ever going back to the mother (or father) land, ever. And, you were required to declare that you intended to become a US citizen. And of course the the different political parties wanted the votes. As for what's the big deal, the US government is flooding the country with immigrants (legal and illegal) so that they can get their votes so that said government can carry out whatever insidious schemes they are planning, regardless of the wishes of the natives.
Regarding illegal non-citizen voting, here's how things have proceeded according to the left:
1. There's no such thing.
2. It's theoretically possible, but it doesn't actually happen.
3. It does happen, but there's not a lot of it.
4. It's a good thing and there should be more of it. <- You are now here
The world should be a Trumbo movie. The immigrant would be refused by the voting clerk, and she would recite the Declaration of Independence, the entire constitution, the bill of rights, and sing the battle hymn of the republic on her way out the door.
@ron, that's not actually accurate. By the 1890s, and before the post-WWI restrictions on entry to the US, trains and steamships had made a trans-Atlantic crossing from southern Europe a matter of days rather than weeks, and it was not uncommon for laborers to migrate between Europe and the US for a year or so to earn much better wages than they could in their home countries. Some did it multiple times. Arnold Kling has been posting a series of lectures on US history starting with the Gilded Age/post-Reconstruction era on his Substack and this was one of the more unusual (to me) findings.
Historical references are meaningless today.
We must never forget the purposeful invasion of our nation - done illegally by a sitting US president.
The the BLM fraudster types are going to march with their "Trump is a racist" lie.
The other big lie is that blacks are being disenfranchised from voting.
"Why is noncitizen voting so terrifying?"
If you're stupid enough to have to ask, you'll never know.
A few useful data points:
• 2024 Iowa election: State officials identified 35 noncitizens who cast ballots in the 2024 general election, out of more than 1.6 million votes. They also found 277 noncitizens on the registration rolls.
https://apnews.com/article/iowa-noncitizen-voting-1badfb99ab7ef21a6fb176d2867d51e5
• 2024 Georgia audit: Officials identified 20 noncitizens among 8.2 million registered voters. Nine had voted in previous elections, but none voted in the November 2024 general election.
https://apnews.com/article/georgia-noncitizens-voter-rolls-14532ef49b66f9cbf34ff483d2534280
• 2016 national sample: The Brennan Center found 30 suspected noncitizen votes among 23.5 million ballots examined. The conservative Heritage Foundation’s database identified 24 cases over a 20-year period (2003–2023).
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/noncitizen-voters-rarity-us-elections-state-private-reviews-show-2024-10-03/
• Federal prosecutions: A 2026 Reuters investigation found only 129 federal prosecutions for noncitizen voting since 1996, with many cases involving misunderstandings, administrative mistakes, or people who mistakenly believed they were eligible.
https://www.reuters.com/investigations/trump-claims-voting-by-noncitizens-is-rampant-america-numbers-tell-another-story-2026-07-19/
“Noncitizen voting” occurs but is exceedingly rare. State investigations often attribute suspected cases to registration errors, outdated records, or voters who later became citizens. Documented cases number in the dozens, not hundreds of thousands, so the data do not support portraying it as a significant factor in U.S. elections.
Darn it, Mason G @3:33, that's what I was going to say!
There might be a fifth stage, to maximize the Orwellianness (Orwellianity?):
5. It's always been this way!
Aliens voting denies civil rights. Democracy dies in darkness.
American Civil Liberties Unburdened
The Democrats are now preparing the ground for when they control Congress and the White House- non-citizen voting is coming the first chance they get to enact it.
Apparently New Jersey, 2024 is not a "data point."
'...the government offered the vote to Europeans who helped dispossess Indians and colonize the West...'
So: Illegal voting by non-citizens is a form of colonization, then. Glad that's finally out in the open, because it would seem that all sides are against colonizing - Right?
And if it is so rare, why are the Dems so spun up about Trump's executive order designed to make sure that people who are not citizens don't get ballots? I'm all ears.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Leftists are happy to tax rape the productive and line their own pockets, bullet trains to nowhere illegals in hotel rooms. Sadly - many of the illegals will be forgotten and given to the streets. Just so long as they can be harnessed to vote.
In CO - a sleuth found 117 people registered with one single bedroom apt.
IEE - data points from? or also - LOL.
"In CO - a sleuth found 117 people registered with one single bedroom apt."
How soon before Colorado makes that sort of investigation illegal, the way they have in California?
"𝘐𝘯 𝘊𝘖 - 𝘢 𝘴𝘭𝘦𝘶𝘵𝘩 𝘧𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 117 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘭𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘥𝘳𝘰𝘰𝘮 𝘢𝘱𝘵.”
Do you have a citation for that?
I couldn’t find a credible source confirming the specific claim that a Colorado one-bedroom apartment had 117 registered voters.
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