Should noncitizens be able to vote in local elections? That’s an issue Congress has left up to local governments themselves, and a small number of municipalities around the country – most notably New York City and San Francisco – have extended the franchise to some noncitizen permanent residents in certain local elections.
But under a new bill proposed by Assemblyman Ron Dancer (R-Plumsted), no New Jersey town would be able to join that cohort. Dancer’s bill requires that any voter in New Jersey, for any election, be a U.S. citizen, and explicitly prohibits local governments from expanding voter eligibility further.
“Specifying in law that only citizens may vote serves to protect our state and local elections,” Dancer said in a statement.
To be clear, no New Jersey municipality currently allows noncitizen voting, and top state Democrats aren’t enamored with the idea; Gov. Phil Murphy said in December that he believes voting is a right that “should be reserved for our citizens.” Dancer’s bill is meant as a preemptive measure, should one of the state’s more liberal municipalities go rogue.
Dancer also unveiled a second election-related bill today that would bar election administrators from accepting private funding to run the state’s elections. The assemblyman cited the example of Mark Zuckerberg’s funding of election infrastructure in 2020, and alluded to false claims that the 2020 election was rigged.
“In 2020, there was an unprecedented injection of hundreds of millions of private dollars into governmental election agencies, which rightfully raised many eyebrows and eroded public trust in our election system,” Dancer said. “Government employees responsible for ballot counting and registering voters must be protected from corruption and outside influence.”
The bills announced this morning aren’t Dancer’s first foray into election law this year. In April, he proposed a bill that would force the state government to cover the cost of local special elections if their mistake caused the election in the first place, something that happened this year in Old Bridge, which is in Dancer’s district.
That bill passed an Assembly committee last month, and stands a solid chance of becoming law; Dancer’s bills to prohibit noncitizen voting and private election funding, however, are less likely to be successful given Democrats’ control of the legislature.