You brought something up that I was not aware of that people can vote and not be a citizen of the country.

That's right.

Tell me a little more about that.

It depends on where the non-citizen is living.

But right now, there are four states plus the District of Columbia that allow non-citizens to vote in local and school board elections.

Wow.

That's California, Illinois, Maryland, California.

And that's why with

Who argues against it? I mean, clearly non-citizens who want to vote, but which Americans are trying to say that it's a good idea to let non-citizens have a say in a structured and official way?

very few politicians are willing to say it out loud that they want non-citizens to be legally voting in the united states but there are many who want it and will only say that behind closed doors right now uh we're trying organizations trying to amend the united states constitution to make it so uh you have to be a citizen in order to vote right now the constitution uh nowhere in it does it say that you need to be a citizen to vote in local, state, or federal elections.

In fact, in Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution and the 17th Amendment, it gives the power to determine who gets to vote in federal elections to the states themselves.

So we're trying to amend the United States Constitution to make it so for federal elections, you have to be a citizen in order to vote.

which we've done some polling, and 90% of the American people are behind that, are for that, and hopefully the politicians in Congress will do something about it and move our bill and get a vote on the House and Senate boards.

Most people just go, oh, that sucks, but move on.

Well, I was born in the United States, so me becoming a citizen, I took the easiest route possible.

I lucked into it.

Tell me a little bit about what you guys are doing and what your aims are.

So Americans for Citizen Voting, I've been with the organization since 2021.

Prior to that, I was working for the Minnesota Republican Party, which if you want to go nuts, work in Minnesota Republican politics.

That's my dog.

Since since 21, we've been trying to amend state constitutions to make it so only U.S. citizens are allowed to vote in state and local elections, because many state constitutions in the part where they define who's allowed to vote, it says any or every or all citizens are Over the age of 18 are allowed to vote, which a lot of people I know I did will look at that and say, well, that looks good.

But if it doesn't say only U.S. citizens, municipalities in every state that has their constitution written the wrong way.

municipalities have an avenue to legalize non-citizen voting.

Okay, so what opposition in your conversations have you gotten and how likely is it for you guys to be able to get this done?

How safe are our elections? Do you see it from the perspective of non-citizens voting?

Yeah.

That depends on how you want to talk about non-citizen voting.

In the election integrity conversation, in the conversation of the Save Act or the Save America Act, and in how non-citizen voting is normally talked about, we talk about it in terms of non-citizens voting illegally and committing voter fraud.

That is 95% of the non-citizen voting conversations.

What we at Americans for Citizen Voting do is we're talking about the legal non-citizen voting.

And you guys mentioned this in the intro, the 24 cities across the country that allow legal non-citizen voting in local elections, which include 24 cities, one of those is Washington, D.C., our nation's capital, where if you are an illegal immigrant who has lived in D.C. for 30 days, you get to legally vote.

Why is that distinction so important?

Well, go ahead.

With time running out, the SAVE Act...

I don't think it has a chance.

And there's only so many months left where Republicans have the trifecta in Washington, D.C., and they need to use that time wisely.

And I hope that they would, if they can't get the SAVE Act passed, even if they can get the SAVE Act passed, that they would pass the...

U.S. citizen voting amendment as well, House Resolution 152, which would prevent states from legalizing non-citizen voting in federal elections.

Because the SAVE Act doesn't address that.

So you've got the Republicans who are going to throw away an 80-20 opportunity? They will.

You're going to vote again, aren't you?

You've done your homework.

The U.S. Constitution does not address this.

It is left to the states.

And in Article I, Section 2, and the 17th Amendment...

The US Constitution says when determining eligibility for congressional elections, it says that whomever a state lets vote for their state legislature, those same people are eligible to vote for members of Congress.

So if a state were to allow, let's say California, since we're talking Los Angeles, If California were to let noncitizens vote for their state legislature, those noncitizens would also be eligible to vote for members of Congress in those elections.

I like your idea of a constitutional amendment, but it's a very high bar, Jack.

Are there any states that allow non-citizens to vote, or is it all mostly at the county or local levels?

Right now it's just at the local level, but there have been several bills over the last couple of decades in a handful of states to legalize non-citizen voting at the state level.

The most recent one is in 2023 in Connecticut, They had a bill to legalize non-citizen voting, and there's been a handful over the last 20 years in New York to legalize non-citizen voting on the state level, which would trigger legal non-citizen voting for congressional elections.

Most people don't know that, but in the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 2, and the 17th Amendment, it says for determining who is eligible to vote in congressional elections, it says whoever a state lets vote for their state's most numerous legislative body is also allowed to vote for Congress.

And that's important.

Tell us a little bit about the proposed amendment.

House Joint Resolution 152, we're calling it the U.S. Citizen Voting Amendment, H.J.R. 152 by Congresswoman Laurel Lee out of Florida, would amend the U.S. Constitution to to sever the tie that exists between state legislative elections and congressional elections.

So that if someday when California legalizes non-citizen voting for their state legislature, it doesn't trigger the automatic eligibility that the U.S. Constitution says it has to trigger for congressional elections.