Adams allows noncitizen voting bill to become law
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Mayor Eric Adams allowed a bill opening up municipal elections to noncitizen New Yorkers to pass over the weekend. AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File
By jacob Kaye
After initially expressing hesitation to support a City Council bill that will allow around 800,000 noncitizens to vote in local elections, Mayor Eric Adams allowed the bill to pass into law over the weekend.
Intro 1867, originally introduced by former City Councilmember Ydanis Rodriguez in January, was passed by the City Council in December, a few weeks before the end of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s time in office.
The law, which amounts to the largest reform to voting in New York City since the passage of ranked-choice voting, allows for noncitizen, lawful permanent residents and those with legal work permits to vote in municipal elections, including in mayoral, comptroller, City Council and borough president races, as long as they have been living in the five boroughs for the past 30 days.
A few days after being sworn in Adams raised concerns over the 30 day provision, signaling that he would want the requirement to be longer than a month. Those concerns were not new – several councilmembers, including Queens members Robert Holden, Selvena Brooks-Powers and former Councilmember Eric Ulrich, raised similar concerns the day the bill was passed and Adams made similar comments during his campaign.
However, on Sunday, Adams took no action on the bill, neither signing it nor vetoing it, and allowed it to pass into law.
“I believe that New Yorkers should have a say in their government, which is why I have and will continue to support this important legislation,” Adams said in a statement over the weekend, the AP reported.
Though the group of affected New Yorkers won’t be able to vote in a municipal election until 2023, the city’s Board of Elections will now have to come up with a plan to implement the law, which is due by July.
The plan must include rules about voter registration and information about how to create separate ballots for municipal elections to prevent noncitizens from voting in federal and state races.
The Board of Elections did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Advocates have called into question the BOE’s ability to implement the law.
In December, Betsy Gotbaum, the executive director of Citizens Union, said that her organization was pleased to see the bill pass but said that it was “imperative that the Board of Elections begin to prepare for noncitizen voting now, and not wait for any litigation filed against this legislation to be resolved.”
“Given the rapid expansion of the electorate and the fact that separate ballots and registration forms will be needed for citizens and noncitizens, the implementation of this reform will be incredibly complex,” Gotbaum said.
Prior to the passage of the bill in the City Council, de Blasio expressed concern over the bill’s legality, a concern also expressed by a handful of Republican councilmembers.
On Monday, the Republican State and National Committees filed a lawsuit against Adams, the City Council and the Board of Elections, over the passage of the bill. In addition to Holden, new Queens Councilmembers Joann Ariola and Vickie Paladino, both Republicans, signed onto the lawsuit.
“Our Constitution is clear, voting is a privilege given to citizens of the United States,” Ariola told the Eagle in December. “What the far left driven Council is doing is nothing short of an attempt to put their fingers on the scale and manipulate elections.”
Rodriguez, who now serves in the Adams administration as the Department of Transportation commissioner, told councilmembers that the bill would withstand legal challenges and noted that it had been approved by the council’s attorneys.
“If we need to go to Albany, we go to Albany together,” Rodriguez said in November. “We also have right-wing opponents in the City of New York who always become an obstacle when we want to move the immigrants’ rights agenda in this city.”
