Eligibility for Voting

Historically, voting was not tied to citizenship but to race, gender, and class. Initially, only white men with property could legally vote. Thus, immigrants who were white and male could vote. By limiting voting rights to white men, the founders made alien suffrage compatible with the exclusion of women, blacks, and men without property from the vote, which contributed to their marginalization (Raskin 1993, p. 1401).

Another reason had to do with the fact that “alien suffrage” was seen as a pathway to citizenship, not a substitute for citizenship. When Congress created new territories, using land obtained from the displacement and genocide of Native Americans, it provided voting rights to immigrants as an incentive to settle the new lands. And it worked. “Alien suffrage” facilitated the voter participation and progress of millions of European immigrants. Immigrant voting allowed newcomers to inject salient issues into public debate, such as labor rights and opposition to prohibition, affecting party dynamics. Noncitizen voters helped determine electoral outcomes in states and locales where immigrants were concentrated. And immigrant voting facilitated their eventual citizenship and incorporation in the U.S.