NYC Gazette

Election integrity advocates applauded a Staten Island judge’s ruling that a measure approved by the Democratically-controlled New York City Council in December giving non-citizens the right to vote in local elections violated the state Constitution.

“More good election news out of the New York!” Ken Cuccinelli, national chair of the Election Transparency Initiative and former Virginia attorney general, told the NYC Gazette in an email.

“More, (it) refers to their voters' decisions in their last election re: their proposed ‘easy to cheat’ voting changes that were rejected by NY voters,” he said. 

In November 2021, New York voters rejected a proposed constitutional amendment to allow for universal absentee voting.

With his ruling on non-citizen voting, Staten Island Supreme Court Judge Ralph Porzio also issued a permanent injunction that blocks the city Board of Elections from letting some 800,000 non-citizen, legal residents to register to vote.

Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, called the ruling “another win for the rule of the law.”

“New York City’s law is a fringe policy that seeks to let 800,000 non-citizens vote, despite the public overwhelmingly rejecting non-citizen voting,” Snead wrote in an email. “In fact, in our recent polling at HEP Action, 84% of people say that only Americans should be voting in American elections. In this case the judge held that the New York State Constitution plainly says that only ‘citizens' of New York State who meet age and residency requirements can register and vote.”

Snead added that the issue was far from over – “enfranchising noncitizens is becoming a major issue for the left. Other local jurisdictions have already enacted similar policies, and some states—most recently Ohio and Louisiana—are pushing back with proposed constitutional amendments banning non-citizen voting.”

As of December 2021, Wikipedia reported that 14 local jurisdictions permitted non-citizen voting. The report, written before the judge’s ruling this week, included New York City in that grouping.

The NYC measure became law in January when newly sworn-in Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, allowed a veto deadline to pass.

A group of New York Republicans, including state Republican Party Chairman Nick Langworthy, filed suit in the Staten Island Supreme Court.

“We vowed to use every legal tool in our arsenal to block this unconstitutional and un-American law, and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” Langworthy said at the time. “The law is clear and the ethics are even clearer: we shouldn’t be allowing citizens of other nations to vote in our elections, full stop.”

In a statement, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Queens) responded to the ruling, saying that that "now more than ever, when our rights are being threatened, we need more civic and community engagement, not less. We are reviewing the ruling and exploring options for moving forward."