Local officials and some advocates in Vermont are pulling back efforts to increase all-resident voting, citing the current political climate.
All-resident or non-U.S. citizen voting allows people who are legal permanent residents to vote on local issues, like school and municipal budgets. These measures don’t allow noncitizens to vote in state or federal elections.
Towns need to change their charters to allow noncitizen voting — a lengthy process that requires voter approval and signoffs from the state Legislature and governor.
In Vermont, three cities currently allow all legal residents to participate in local elections: Burlington, Winooski and Montpelier. But it’s uncertain if more towns will join their ranks anytime soon.
The city of South Burlington had been examining a potential ballot item that, if passed, would allow all legal residents to vote in local elections.
Last month, the charter committee, in a 4-3 vote, recommended that the South Burlington City Council not proceed with the ballot measure at this time. The majority of committee members cited the current political climate, and an inability to get information on whether legal residents were even interested in the change, as reasons to table the matter.
“What we really wanted to do was find out the opinions of those who would be affected in South Burlington by the charter change, those who would be able to vote if this passed,” said Anne LaLonde, a member of the South Burlington Charter Committee. “And we reached out to community groups and tried to ask them to ask folks that they were working with, but we didn't really get answers to that particular question.”
LaLonde, who voted against tabling the issue, said there were other challenges to moving forward, like the looming threats of a gubernatorial veto and legal action. The towns that have passed noncitizen voting measures have faced lawsuits, though most of those cases have been dismissed.
More from Vermont Public: ‘Now I have my voice here’: The impact of noncitizen voting in Vermont
Even some advocacy groups that have pushed for noncitizen voting in Vermont say they’re scaling back now amid the Trump administration's immigration policies and ramping up of deportations.
The League of Women Voters in Vermont recently made some changes to the way it advocates for all-resident voting, deciding to temporarily put its non-U.S. voting committee on hold.
“That doesn't mean that we're not educating people about the truth and the facts around non-U.S. citizen voting,” said Marguerite Adelman, the vice president of the League of Women Voters of Vermont. “But in terms of our active work in that area, we put that on hold.”
Recent actions on the federal level have also made advocates and local officials wary of pursuing noncitizen voting efforts. In April, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the SAVE Act. The proposed law would require people to show multiple documents proving their U.S. citizenship when they register to vote. It is unknown how the bill, if passed, would affect local policies.
Adelman says she understands why municipalities would be wary about trying to implement all-resident voting given the current political climate surrounding immigration and voter eligibility.
“I'd like to come back to them at some point, hopefully, when we have a changing climate for this particular topic,” she said. “It's not like non-U.S. citizen voting is new at all. … It has moved forward, but very slowly and only at the local level.”
The all-resident voting issue in Vermont has been contentious, even before Trump’s second term. Gov. Phil Scott vetoed the charter changes voters passed in Winooski, Montpelier and Burlington, before being overruled by the Democrat-controlled Legislature each time.
In Vermont, towns that allow all-resident voting typically see very few people take advantage of the opportunity.
In Winooski on Town Meeting Day 2022, the first election to allow all-resident voting, 54 ballots were cast. That number has shrunk in recent years, with only eight all-legal resident ballots cast on Town Meeting Day this year.
More from NPR: Some cities allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. Their turnout is quite low
In Burlington, the state’s largest city, 97 resident voters — or nearly 89% of eligible registered noncitizen residents — participated in the annual city election on Town Meeting Day 2024. Only 41% of registered non-resident voters participated in annual city elections this year.
Montpelier has had consistently low noncitizen voter turnout since first allowing all residents to vote in local elections on Town Meeting Day 2023. Ten noncitizen residents cast ballots in 2023, 12 in 2024 and five this year.
Falko Schilling, the advocacy director at the ACLU of Vermont, says that despite growing challenges to voter rights at a federal level, the organization remains committed to supporting the expansion of all-resident voting rights in Vermont.
“We've worked to remove barriers to the ballot box while other states are trying to put them up,” he said. “We're excited to continue that work.”
