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As Marylanders took to the polls Tuesday for local elections, voters in the liberal communities of Greenbelt and Rockville drew different conclusions about whether noncitizens also should be allowed to vote.
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In Greenbelt, preliminary results showed a decisive 67 percent of voters favored expanding ballot access for local elections, a first step toward the small city joining the growing number of suburban Maryland localities to embrace noncitizen voting in the most diverse state on the East Coast, which boasts a rising immigrant population. A handful of municipalities in Maryland held local contests during Tuesday’s off-year election.
Should local officials in Greenbelt take voters’ wishes to heart, legislation will be enacted to make the city of roughly 25,000 people the 12th municipality in Maryland to extend voting rights in local elections to all residents regardless of citizenship status — the largest concentration of any state — making the city part of a small, long-standing push to expand access. The District of Columbia joined in last year, but the city faces a federal lawsuit alleging that the enabling legislation “dilutes” the votes of citizens. At least seven states, including Ohio and Florida, have banned the practice.
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In neighboring Montgomery County, where other cities allow noncitizens to vote, 64 percent of Rockville voters rejected the idea, according to preliminary results. Voters also rejected extending ballot access to 16- and 17-year-olds and creating new districts, but they did endorse term limits. Rockville voters also elected a slate of new city leaders and a new mayor, as did neighboring Gaithersburg.
In both cities, the resolutions were meant to gauge public support and did not bind leaders to future actions. Advocates for expanded ballot access promised to bring up the issues again in both jurisdictions and possibly elsewhere.
“We view municipalities as these laboratories of democracy. They’re able to implement a lot of the reforms that we’re working on at a state level,” said Joanne Antoine, executive director of grass-roots voter-advocacy group Common Cause Maryland.
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“The more that municipalities pass these reforms, show that young people are capable of voting, the more we can push them elsewhere. … My hope is that we’ll come back to these things again,” she said.
Gustavo Torres, executive director of the immigrant rights group CASA de Maryland, said his organization took up the cause of noncitizen voting because there are residents throughout both counties who pay taxes and contribute to the cultural fabric of these communities all while not being able to elect leaders who also serve their needs.
“People do not understand what it means. They feel like it’s something totally new, but it’s not,” Torres said, pointing to places like Takoma Park, which has had expanded access for some years.
At the same time, Torres was under fire Wednesday from elected officials in Montgomery County for comments released in a statement and posted on X, formerly Twitter, in which he supported Palestinians and condemned Israel’s actions. Several Montgomery County Council members decried the posts — now deleted — as antisemitic, and the county’s entire delegation to the Maryland Senate released a letter calling into question whether state tax dollars should continue to support the long-influential immigrant rights group.
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Torres said in an interview that “we believe that we made a big mistake.”
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“The message that we were trying to communicate was not well written because it was not our intention to hurt people we have known, respected and worked with for years,” Torres said, adding that the organization is working on a new statement in consultation with some Jewish community leaders. “We believe the best solution is a peaceful solution, and we profoundly apologize because we offended our friends.”
Greenbelt on Tuesday elected its first Black female council member, building on other firsts. The first and largest New Deal planned community was the first in majority-Black Prince George’s County to approve a reparations commission, and it is among one of the places in the county to have an openly LGBTQ+ city council member.
Neighboring cities such as Colmar Manor, Mount Rainier and Hyattsville have already adopted measures that allow noncitizen residents to vote in local elections, and Greenbelt had the chance to “be on the right side of history,” said Greenbelt council member Brandon “Ric” Gordon, who was reelected Tuesday, preliminary results showed.
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“This shows Greenbelt who we are as a community. … We care for our neighbors, no matter the citizenship status,” he said in an interview. “We have a melting pot here in Greenbelt. We understand each other.”
Nearly 29 percent of the city’s population is foreign-born, which exceeds local, state and national averages, according to census data. Among Maryland’s 6 million-plus residents, about 15 percent are foreign-born.
Whether noncitizens should have the right to vote has been swirling among Greenbelt voters since at least the last election, when it was placed in a questionnaire for the previous mayor, Gordon noted.
Greenbelt resident Bob Rand, 17, said he would have liked to have seen the council have the “moral strength” to have a referendum on the ballot instead of the nonbinding advisory question, as he felt Greenbelt was already “behind the curve” compared with neighboring cities that have legislation on the books.
The advisory question, he worries, could give the council an opportunity to not do much with the public’s wishes, he said.
On Tuesday, Rand, 70, was with an ad hoc group of supporters with signs in favor of the question at polls.
It’s time for Greenbelt to give something to so many people who contribute to the taxes and the culture of the place Rand has called home for 17 years, he said.
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