A New York appellate court stands up for citizens’ rights

Leftists are not importing illegal aliens because they want these people to have a better life. They’re importing them because they want their votes. For this plan to work, though, these votes must come sooner rather than later. Giving illegal aliens amnesty and then citizenship is slow, so leftists are finding workarounds. One workaround is to grant voting rights to non-citizens who are legal residents. If leftists get amnesty passed, they’ve got an instant, huge political bloc. It’s also inevitable that, eventually, legal residency will be irrelevant. However, for now, an appellate court in New York says the approach violates the state’s constitution and must stop.

From the New York Post:

A controversial New York City law that would have allowed 800,000 noncitizens, but legal residents, to vote in municipal elections was struck down as unconstitutional by a state appeals court Wednesday.

“We determine that this local law was enacted in violation of the New York State Constitution and Municipal Home Rule Law, and thus, must be declared null and void,” Appellate Judge Paul Wooten wrote in the 3-1 majority decision.

Wooten said the state constitution broadly refers to only citizens having the right to vote in elections, municipal as well as statewide or for state legislative offices.

“Article IX provides that the elected officials of ‘local governments’ shall be elected by ‘the people,’ which incorporates by reference the eligibility requirements for voting under article II, section 1, applying exclusively to ‘citizens,'” the judge wrote.

The decision also points out that, once started down this road, it’s perfectly possible for a non-citizen to end up as mayor of New York. Had the judge wanted, he could have added that, in San Francisco, a non-citizen now has a say in the city’s election processes.

If I read the NY Post article correctly, the single dissenting judge (a woman, of course) was unconcerned with little things like the law. Instead, she said it was unfair that New York citizens couldn’t vote to violate New York law:

“The majority, by deeming the noncitizen voting law invalid, effectively prohibits municipalities across the state from deciding for themselves the persons who are entitled to a voice in the local electoral process,” she wrote.

“The majority’s determination also disenfranchises nearly one million residents of the City, despite the fact that its people’s duly elected representatives have opted to enfranchise those same residents.”

This is the same mindset, of course, that sees Joe Biden boasting about ignoring the Supreme Court’s prohibition against his administration unilaterally forcing taxpayers to pay for the loans of baristas with $200,000 in debt for their “womyn’s studies” degrees.

Citizenship matters because it speaks of ties to and an investment in a community. Whether you look back on a lineage that goes deep into American history, your parents waited years to come legally to America and then waited more years to earn their vote, or whether you waited patiently to come to America and earn a vote, it bespeaks a belief in and commitment to what America stands for.

If voting rights are handed out like cheap flash drives at a Vegas convention, they are meaningless things that will swiftly be discarded or sold to the highest bidder. Citizenship is no longer a precious right; it is a commodity—and that’s exactly the way Democrats want it.

Thankfully, three judges in New York State are, at least for now, holding the line. It remains to be seen whether (a) they’re providing instructions for how to do a better job violating the law; (b) they’re an anomaly, which is judges in a leftist enclave who believe in legal principles; or (c) they’ve read the political tea leaves and are beginning to realize that the tide is turning against ascendant leftism, even in New York State.

Image: Voting in Washington D.C., 1964. Library of Congress.

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