How NYC Is Opening the Voting Booth to Non-U.S. Citizens

Hundreds of thousands of people are newly eligible to vote in New York City elections thanks to a new law extending voting rights to certain non-U.S. citizens. If all goes according to plan and threatened legal challenges fail, these newly enfranchised voters can start participating in elections in 2023. Their voting rights would apply only to New York City elections, not federal or state ones. At a time when some states are applying new restrictions on voting, New York City becomes the largest U.S. city to allow noncitizens to vote in certain elections, joining San Francisco as well as jurisdictions in Maryland and Vermont.

It applies to holders of so-called green cards -- noncitizens allowed to live and work permanently in the U.S. It also covers people who are temporarily authorized to work in the country; included in that group are young people who were children when they were brought to the U.S. as undocumented immigrants, have lived in America much or most of their lives and have received renewable two-year work permits through a program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. (This group is sometimes known as “Dreamers.”) The only other requirement is that prospective new voters must have resided in the city for 30 or more days prior to an election.