Peach Tree Times

Americans for Citizens Voting will host a rally at the state capitol in Atlanta on Saturday, Jan. 8 at 1 p.m., supporting an amendment to the state’s constitution clarifying that only U.S. citizens should be eligible to vote in Georgia elections. 

In a statement, Jenny Beth Martin of the Tea Party Patriots, who also will be speaking at the rally, said they support the amendment and urged the Legislature to pass it with majorities strong enough to have it implemented before the fall election.

“It should go without saying that the right to vote is a core benefit of citizenship," Martin told the Peach Tree Times. "Sadly, it does not — with cities like San Francisco and New York opening their elections to non-citizens, and ongoing efforts to extend the right to vote to non-citizens elsewhere, including here in Georgia, it becomes necessary to amend our state constitution to make clear our belief that ONLY citizens have the right to vote in our elections.” 

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger supported the initiative in September 2021, signing on to the Americans for Citizen Voting petition supporting an amendment to the Georgia Constitution that would clarify that all voters are to be citizens of the United States. In a release posted to the Georgia Secretary of State website, Raffensperger called voting a "sacred responsibility for American citizens," adding that everyone should agree that only American citizens should be able to vote in U.S. elections. 

"I call on my fellow Georgia citizens to sign this petition and work with their legislators to get this amendment passed by the General Assembly and on the ballot,” Raffensperger said in the release. 

State by state, legal language is not as clear. In Maryland, several municipalities have extended voting rights to non-citizens as well as U.S. citizens. 

“Every citizen of the United States, of the age of 18 years or upwards, who is a resident of the State as of the time for the closing of registration next preceding the election, shall be entitled to vote in the ward or election district in which the citizen resides at all elections to be held in this State,” the Maryland Constitution states. 

According to analysis by Ballotpedia, a number of other states do not currently have clear language specifying that only citizens are eligible to vote and note that several municipalities across the country have moved to allow non-citizens the right to vote in municipal elections.

Despite this, some states, like Colorado, have passed amendments clarifying the citizen voting language. Colorado's Amendment 76, also called the Citizenship Requirement for Voting Initiative, was approved as a constitutional amendment by the state's voters in November 2020. It changed language stating "every citizen" can vote in Colorado to "only a citizen" can vote, winning 63% of the vote.

In 1996, the U.S. Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which prohibited non-citizens from voting in federal elections for president, the U.S. House or U.S. Senate. The law did not address non-citizens voting in state or local elections.

The Georgia Secretary of State website states an amendment clarifying that only U.S. citizens could vote in Georgia would require supermajority passage in both chambers of the Georgia Legislature and approval by voters.