“In some states, Democrats are even trying to give illegal immigrants the right to vote. They want to give them the right to vote,” President Donald Trump told a Florida crowd on Wednesday. “We believe that only American citizens should vote in American elections,” he continued.
Are Democrats in some states “trying to give illegal immigrants the right to vote”?
It should be noted up front that it is illegal for undocumented immigrants to vote in federal elections. As 18 USC 611: Voting by Aliens states:
In some localities, certain undocumented immigrants are allowed to vote for particular elections. Take San Francisco’s recent Proposition N, which voters passed 54 percent to 46 percent in 2016. The proposition allows particular undocumented immigrants (who are old enough and are the legal caretakers/parents of children in San Francisco under the age of 19) to vote in in School Board elections. San Francisco’s government website specifies:
One potentially harrowing clarification the website makes is that “any information you provide to the Department of Elections, including your name and address, may be obtained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other agencies, organizations, and individuals.”
Several towns and cities in Maryland allow non-citizens to vote as well, with College Park becoming the largest U.S. municipality to let undocumented immigrants vote in municipal elections in 2017. (The number of non-citizens who take up these opportunities is, however, rather small.)
Ultimately, it’s difficult to parse the exact accuracy of Trump’s statement. Federal law expressly prohibits illegal immigrants from voting in federal elections, but Trump does not specifically reference federal elections. He says that this is happening “in some states.” But there are no state-level elections where Democrats are giving illegal immigrants the right to vote, either. There are, however, at least a few municipal-level elections where Democrats have pushed to give certain groups of undocumented immigrants the ability to vote in specific local elections.
So on the one hand, Trump’s assertion is not true in the broad sense, but is true in the technical sense. But on the other hand, if you want to get even more precise, it’s not true in the technical sense because these are not state-level elections we’re talking about. And on the third hand, if you’re dead-set on finding a way that Trump’s statement is true, then you can go to an even deeper technical level by saying that these municipal elections are happening “in”—meaning, inside the geographic boundaries—of states. So the ultimate truth or falsity here rests on what the meaning of the word “in” is. Bill Clinton would be proud.
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