COLUMBIA, S.C. – South Carolina voters will decide in November on a constitutional amendment that would allow only American citizens to vote in all state elections.
The Citizens Only Voting Amendment passed the South Carolina House of Representatives on a 105-0 vote May 2. Senate Joint Resolution 1126 passed the Senate last month a 40-3 vote.
“Today South Carolina took an important step forward in defending the value of citizenship,” Senator Josh Kimbrell, the bill’s author, said. “We will never allow a non-citizen to vote in any election in our state, but we will make it easy for legal, law-abiding citizens of the United States and of our state to vote in all our elections. Citizenship matters, and this vote proves that point.”
Kimbrell
| Courtesy photo
Kimbrell (R-Spartanburg) said he expects the amendment to be approved by voters this fall. Recent polling suggests at least 80 percent of the South Carolinians support the change. A simple majority of voters in the November general election is all that is needed to approve the amendment.
“This is something that everyone should agree with,” Kimbrell said. “This is not a partisan issue. Protecting voting rights is important. We shouldn’t have people who aren’t citizens of South Carolina or the country voting in any election, whether it’s a school board race, a city election or a statewide race.
“We’re just trying to eliminate any ambiguity here. We don’t want there to be any legal way to interpret the constitution that would allow this to happen.”
If approved, the state constitution was have one word replaced with two. Instead of saying “Every citizen of …,” the amendment would change it to “Only a citizen of the United States and of this state of the age of eighteen and upwards who is properly registered is entitled to vote as provided by law.”
Americans for Citizen Voting is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to helping citizens pass such amendments.
“This is a tremendous victory for the citizens of South Carolina,” ACV President Avi McCullah previously said.
In March, Idaho lawmakers passed a similar measure to join Iowa, Kentucky and Wisconsin whose voters will have similar measures on the ballot this November.
In recent years, city councils in New York, Washington and three cities in Vermont have voted to legalize foreign citizen voting. They join cities in California, Illinois and Maryland that, because of a loophole in their state constitutions, also allow foreign citizens to vote.
“Most state constitutions do not specifically prohibit foreign citizen voting,” McCullah said. “Many people, even legislators, are unaware of this fact.”
If approved by voters, South Carolina – as well as Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky and Wisconsin – will join 11 states whose constitutions reserve the right to vote for only citizens of the United States. In recent years, the following states have passed these amendments: Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Ohio and North Dakota. Similar efforts are underway in Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas and West Virginia.
And a delegate in the Virginia General Assembly introduced legislation earlier this year that would require Virginia residents to prove U.S. citizenship when registering to vote by providing a birth certificate, passport or naturalization documents.
In March, West Virginia Governor Jim Justice and state Senate President Craig Blair said they want to see the issue on the agenda for a planned special session after the legislation stalled during the regular session that ended earlier this month.