Perhaps nothing betrayed the soft woke underbelly of New York’s City Council more than its passage of a local law in December of 2021 allowing approximately 800,000 non-citizens to vote in local elections. Yes, that’s right, non-citizens! And when you take into account that typically very few people come out just for local elections, this had the potential for cementing leftist migrant control of local New York government for generations. Happily, last week, the New York Court of Appeals, NY’s highest court, overwhelmingly struck the law down as unconstitutional, being in violation of the New York State Constitution.
But what rankles the most in this episode is not the sheer counter-intuitiveness of it all. It is that the law flies directly in the face of explicit governing provisions of the New York State Constitution. And yet, notwithstanding, the woke council members plowed ahead with their slavish devotion to their faux notions of expanding voting rights.
Article II, Section 1 of the New York State Constitution provides that, “Every citizen shall be entitled to vote at every election for all officers elected by the people and upon all questions submitted to the vote of the people provided that such citizen is eighteen years of age or over and shall have been a resident of this state, and of the county, city or village for 30 days next preceding an election.”
Local laws must be consistent with the provisions of state constitutions. How then did the leftist council members get around the clear constitutional language limiting all electoral voting in the state to “citizens.” According to the Court’s opinion invalidating the law, they argued – apparently with a straight face – that “Article II Section 1 merely provides a floor, guaranteeing that citizens may vote in all elections but not prohibiting voting by other…” Put another way, their argument seemed to be that local laws could grant the right to non-citizens since the constitution only said who could vote but not who couldn’t! Remarkable.
But the Court made short shrift of this gobbledygook: “It’s plain from the language and restrictions contained in Article II that “citizen” is not meant as a floor, but as a condition of voter eligibility…”
Comments on the decision from supporters of the legislation were instructive. Cesar Ruiz, an associate counsel at LatinoJustice PRLDEF who argued the case for the proponents said in a statement that the ruling was a “terrible setback for our immigrant communities who contribute so much to the well-being of the city.” Another supporter said this “is disappointing court ruling or people who value bringing in thousands more New Yorkers into the democratic process.”
But that all isn’t the point, is it? Neither cancel culture nor the rule of the street are viable political doctrines to live by.
