South Burlington won’t put noncitizen voting on March ballot

This story by Liberty Darr was first published in The Other Paper on Nov. 14

The South Burlington Charter Committee told the city council last week that an all-resident voter expansion is too complex to be brought before city voters at this time.

All resident voting would allow all the city’s legal residents, including those who are noncitizens, to vote in local elections and other supplementary school or city votes. The idea was first brought to the city council by the city’s Democratic committee in September with the hopes of having it placed on the ballot next March, but the committee said that’s not possible.

The city council, on a 4-1 vote, passed the resolution charging the charter committee to bring a recommendation back to the council by Nov. 4. But according to the committee, the work is still far from over.

The charter committee is unique in that it only meets when given a specific task. It was initially created in 2022 to explore different governance models and an expansion of the council and the South Burlington School Board.

But for committee members, the most recent charge is vastly different from the last.

“I see this as a pro-democracy step, moving in the direction of having more voices representative of our community. But there are a lot more questions,” member Kate Bailey said. “This law, if we were to change the charter, is going to directly impact the lives of folks who are not typically used to having their voices heard in government.”

She explained that in other processes, the committee had time to garner more public input through surveys, public outreach and hearings. With such a tight timeline, the committee is hard-pressed to find enough information to make a thoughtful recommendation.

Anne LaLonde, chair of the committee, said that members met twice over the past two months, first to dial down on the process and also to compile questions from each committee member about the topic.

“We started a list, and there was a really long list,” she said. “It was clear that people were uncomfortable at that first meeting with a tight timeframe.”

Data compiled by the committee so far showed that in the three other cities in Vermont that have adopted similar charter changes — Montpelier, Winooski and Burlington — there are a slew of behind-the-scenes complexities.

According to preliminary data provided by city clerks to the committee, Burlington has approximately 1,450 legal-resident noncitizens of voting age, and 116 — 7 percent — registered to vote. In March 2024, 97 voted. Winooski has around 900 legal noncitizens and in the city’s three elections allowing all-resident voting, they have had 54, 25 and 16 people vote.

Montpelier has 18 noncitizens registered to vote and the three elections using all-resident voting had 5, 8, and 13 ballots cast.

All three clerks reported to the committee that their biggest problem is maintaining a separate voter checklist since they cannot enter the noncitizen voters into the statewide checklist system and must find manual ways to keep the list separate, which can be extensively time-consuming. Clerks also voiced concern about the need for extra workers at polling locations to monitor a separate check-in table to prevent noncitizen voters from receiving a state or federal ballot in elections that are not local.

The cost also varies greatly if the city has interpreters, the committee reported. For example, Winooski pays $3,000 for interpreters and has ballots prepared in 14 languages, which cost the city another $2,900.

Along with clerical complexities, all-resident voting in the three cities has incited legal challenges over the years. Most recently, Montpelier’s charter change was upheld by the Vermont Supreme Court in January 2023, which ruled that the change did not violate the Vermont Constitution. In Winooski, a similar challenge was dismissed by the Chittenden Superior Court last December.

Burlington’s charter change is the latest to be challenged and litigation in Superior Court is ongoing, although that case is specifically challenging whether a vote on a school budget is solely a local issue due to the way education is funded in Vermont.

But Bailey, who was formerly chair of the South Burlington School Board, explained that there is always a tug of war between local and state control when it comes to school budgets.

“It is on the local ballot, and you are making decisions that are going to impact your local taxes and it’s going to impact the kids in your district,” she said. “When I think about all-resident voting, I think of how, directly or indirectly, folks who are not citizens are paying taxes; they’re contributing to our economy, and they’re sending their kids to schools.”

Although the committee made no recommendation this month, it will continue the work over the next several months and ultimately bring a recommendation to the council, which will either choose to take up the recommendation or not.

“It just feels like the kind of issue that I want to be really intentional and hold carefully because I want it to foster community and democracy and engagement, and not foster fear and otherness in our community,” Bailey said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: South Burlington won’t put noncitizen voting on March ballot.