Race, the Ballot, and Hegemony: What the Struggle over Immigrant Voting Teaches Us About Rightwing Mobilization in the U.S.

Abstract

While there has been an increase in rhetoric and efforts to block expanding voting rights to noncitizens around the United States, there is a relative lack of academic research examining the ideology, political actors, and strategy behind such efforts. In addressing this gap, we explore anti-immigrant voting rights campaigns as they relate to broader rightwing mobilization and voter suppression efforts. We draw upon the literature on Gramsci’s conception of hegemony to document and analyze efforts to use state power to change constitutions and election laws in ways that politically disenfranchise working class people of color in order to institutionalize white minority rule. We explore the nature of this political project and how more conventional rightwing actors dovetail with grassroots extremism by examining both historical and contemporary cases. We show how these networks have employed a mix of legal, administrative, and violent tactics during the turn of the twentieth century as well as in the contemporary period to politically realize a common, exclusionary ideology to shape the electorate and polity. We argue struggles over noncitizen voting rights reflect debate about distinct visions of who properly constitutes “the people,” and what is and should be the nature of the American polity: are we a white Anglo Christian republic or a multiracial egalitarian democracy? In so doing, we argue the rise and fall – and reemergence – of noncitizen immigrant voting rights in the U.S. represents a microcosm of the broader “voting wars” embroiling the nation.

Keywords:

• Ideology
• rightwing extremism
• voting rights
• immigration politics
• Florida

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Brennan Center, “Debunking the Voter Fraud Myth,” 2017, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/debunking-voter-fraud-myth.

2 Although different terms are used to describe immigrant voting, including “noncitizen voting,” “resident voting,” “local citizenship,” and “alien suffrage,” they all mean essentially the same thing: enfranchising or restoring voting rights to residents of a jurisdiction who are currently excluded from the electorate because they are not US citizens. We distinguish between foreign-born immigrants who are “documented” versus “undocumented” as well as immigrants who have naturalized and became U.S. citizens conceptually and empirically where data permits. In 2022, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), there were 44.1 million foreign-born persons in the U.S., of which 22.5 million were naturalized (had become citizens of the U.S.). Of the remaining 21.7 million, about half were “legal permanent residents” or have one of more than a dozen visas to reside legally in the U.S. (for example, employment, student), with the remaining approximately 11 million being undocumented (CRS, “Citizenship and Immigration Statuses of the U.S. Foreign-Born Population,” July 18, 2022. https://sgp.fas.org/crs/homesec/IF11806.pdf). See also Nicole Ward and Jeanne Batolova, “Frequently Requested Statistics on Immigrants and Immigration in the United States,” Migration Policy Institute, March 14, 2023. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/print/17664.

3 Richard L. Hasen, “The 2016 U.S. Voting Wars: From Bad to Worse,” William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 26, no. 3 (2018): 629–56; Brennan Center for Justice, “Voting Laws Roundup: December 2022,” December 19, 2022. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-december-2022.

4 Rogers M. Smith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in US History (New Haven, N.J: Yale University Press, 1997); Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2009); Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We?: The Challenges to America’s National Identity (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2004); Patrick J. Buchanan, The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization (New York, NY: Macmillan, 2010); Joseph E. Lowndes, From the New Deal to the New Right: Race and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism (New Haven, NJ: Yale University Press, 2008); Steve Phillips, Brown is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution has Created a New American Majority (New York, NY: The New Press, 2018).

5 Smith, Civic Ideals; Judith Shklar, American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991); Gerald Horne, “The Counter-revolution of 1776,” in The Counter-Revolution of 1776 (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2014).

6 Jamin B. Raskin, “Legal Aliens, Local Citizens: The Historical, Constitutional and Theoretical Meanings of Alien Suffrage,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 141, no. 4 (1993): 1391–470; Keyssar, The Right to Vote.

7 Roxane Dunbar-Ortiz, Not “A Nation of Immigrants”: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2021).

8 Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: Highlights from the Twentieth Century, (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 2004); Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove, Voices of a People’s History of the United States (New York, NY: Seven Stories Press, 2011).

9 Peniel E. Joseph, “The Revolution Never Ended” The Atlantic Magazine, December 2023, Atlantic.com; Peniel E. Joseph, The Third Reconstruction: America’s Struggle for Racial Justice (New York, NY: Basic Book, 2020).

10 Hanes Walton, Jr. et al., American Politics and the African American Quest for Universal Freedom (New York, NY: Routledge, 2021).

11 Michael Goldfield, The Color of Politics (New York, NY: New York Press, 1997).

12 Daniel J. Tichenor, Dividing lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002); Daniel Kanstroom, Deportation Nation: Outsiders in American history (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007); Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014).

13 Frances F. Piven and Richard A. Cloward, Why Americans Still Don’t Vote: And Why Politicians Want It That Way (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2000); Ron Hayduk, Gatekeepers to the Franchise: Shaping Election Administration in New York (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2005).

14 Richard Franklin Bensel, The American Ballot Box in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Richard M. Valelly, “How Suffrage Politics Made—and Makes—America,” Oxford Handbook of American Political Development (2016): 445–72; Ron Hayduk, Marcela Garcia-Gastonon, and Vedika Bhaumik, “Unpacking the Complexities of ‘Alien Suffrage’ in American Political History,” Journal of American Ethnic History 43, no. 2 (2024); Piven and Cloward, Why Americans Still Don’t Vote.

15 Elmer E. Schattschneider, Party Government, (New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1942); Valdimer O. Key, Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups (New York, NY: Crowell 1942); Walter Dean Burnham, Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics (New York, NY: Norton, 1970); Steven J. Rosenstone and John Mark Hansen, Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in America (Harlow, UK: Longman, 1993); Piven and Cloward, Why Americans Still Don’t Vote.

16 Christopher Baylor, First to the Party: The Group Origins of Political Transformation (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018); David Karol, Party Position Change in American Politics: Coalition Management (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Gregory Koger, Seth Masket, and Hans Noel, “Cooperative Party Factions in American Politics,” American Politics Research 38, no. 1 (2010): 33–53; Katherine Lyn Krimmel, “Special Interest Partisanship: The Transformation of American Political Parties.” (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2013); Seth Masket, The Inevitable Party: Why Attempts to Kill the Party System Fail and How They Weaken Democracy (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2016); Kay Lehman Schlozman and John T. Tierney, Organized Interests and American Democracy (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1986); Sidney Tarrow, Movements and Parties: Critical Connections in American Political Development (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2021).

17 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (London, UK: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971).

18 Smith, Civic ideals; Goldfield, The Color of Politics; Desmond S. King and Rogers M. Smith, “Racial orders in American political development,” American Political Science Review 99, no. 1 (2005): 75–92; Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2023).

19 Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States (New York, NY: Routledge, 2014).

20 William E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014); David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness (New York, NY: Verso, 2022).

21 Lowndes, From the New Deal to the New Right; Carol Anderson, One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy (London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2018).

22 Daniel Martinez and Joseph E. Lowndes, Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2019).

23 Kirk Harold Porter, A History of Suffrage in the United States (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1918); Raskin, “Legal Aliens, Local Citizens”; Marta Tienda, “Demography and the Social Contract,” Demography 39 (2002): 587–616; Keyssar, The Right to Vote; Ron Hayduk, Democracy for All: Restoring Immigrant Voting in the United States (New York, NY: Routledge, 2006).

24 Hiroshi Motomura, Americans in Waiting: The Lost Story of Immigration and Citizenship in the United States (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2006).

25 Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States; Rachel Michelle Gunter, “Immigrant Declarants and Loyal American Women: How Suffragists Helped Redefine the Rights of Citizens,” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 19, no. 4 (2020): 591–606; Hayduk et al., “Unpacking the Complexities of ‘Alien Suffrage.’”

26 Matthew Rainbow Hale, “Many Who Wandered in Darkness: The Contest over American National Identity, 1795–1798,” Early American Studies 1, no 1. Spring, (2003):127–75.

27 Linda Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition (New York, NY: Liveright Publishing, 2017); Kathleen Blee and Mehr Latif, “Ku Klux Klan: Vigilantism against blacks, immigrants and other minorities,” in Vigilantism against Migrants and Minorities (New York, NY: Routledge, 2019), 31–42.

28 Importantly, “alien suffrage” also functioned to advance the displacement and genocide of Native Americans, fostering forms of settler colonialism, and it was used by dominant political factions to block or delay the enfranchisement of African Americans and women in ways that could serve exclusionary goals and outcomes in some cases.

29 Richard Alba and Victor Nee, “Rethinking Assimilation Theory for a New Era of Immigration,” in The New Immigrant in American Society (New York, NY: Routledge, 2014), 2–50; Catherine S. Ramírez, Assimilation: An Alternative History (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2020). There are key differences between notions of immigrant incorporation versus the problematic concept of immigrant ‘assimilation.’ Scholars concerned with ‘assimilation’ usually focus on social and attitudinal characteristics of the sum of individuals, ‘such as language acquisition, educational attainment, labor market participation, health behavior. If conceived or analyzed at the level of groups, it is often in terms of whether groups converge or diverge in outcomes compared with each other, such as comparing Mexican and Cuban immigrants. Some scholars of immigrant assimilation debate whether immigrants from particular countries enjoy occupational mobility; or whether different national origin groups are converging or diverging in outcomes such as intermarriage, residential dispersion, and educational attainment. Like most contemporary scholars, we reject offensive assumptions and expectations of ‘melting-pot assimilation’ or ‘Anglo-conformality assimilation’ endemic to such studies.

30 While scholars agree about the motives and techniques used in the South to disenfranchise blacks and many poor whites, including how they buttressed activities and violence perpetrated by those creating Jim Crow, fewer scholars acknowledge the role of a similar set of disenfranchising measures enacted in the North.

31 Howard W. Allen and Kay Warren Allen, “Vote fraud and data validity,” in Analyzing Electoral History: A Guide to the Study of American Voting Behavior, ed. Jerome M. Clubb et al. (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1981), 153–92; Peter H. Argersinger, “New Perspectives on Election Fraud in the Gilded Age,” Political Science Quarterly 100, no. 4 (1985): 669–87.

32 Ibid. Lorraine C. Minnite, The Myth of Voter Fraud (Cornell, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011); Hayduk, Gatekeepers to the Franchise.

33 Allen and Allen, “Vote Fraud and Data Validity,” 172–4.

34 Edward Foley, Ballot battles: The History of Disputed Elections in the United States (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015).

35 Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 160.

36 Richard Hofstadter and Michael Wallace, American Violence (New York, NY: Knopf, 2012).

37 Peter Vellon, “Between White Men and Negroes: The Perception of Southern Italian Immigrants through the Lens of Italian Lynchings,” in Anti-Italianism: Essays on a Prejudice, eds. William J. Cornell and Fred Gardaphé (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010): 23–32; Ngai, Impossible Subjects.

38 Richard Franklin Bensel, The American Ballot Box in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Didi Kuo and Jan Teorell, “Illicit Tactics as Substitutes: Election Fraud, Ballot Reform, and Contested Congressional Elections in the United States, 1860-1930,” Comparative Political Studies 50, no. 5 (2017): 665–96; Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK.

39 New York City allowed immigrants to vote in Community School Board Elections from 1969 to 2002, when the school boards were consolidated and eliminated with the creation of the Department of Education.

40 Takoma Park, Barnesville, Martin’s Additions, Somerset, Garrett Park, Chevy Chase, Chevy Chase Section Three, Chevy Chase Section Five, Hyattsville, Glen Echo and, Mount Rainer. Most of these towns have allowed immigrants to vote in local elections since the 1990s.

41 Amherst, Cambridge, Brookline, and Newton Massachusetts. Boston has explored a bill.

42 San Jose, Santa Ana, Pasadena, Richmond, and Los Angeles.

43 Dan Ferris, Ron Hayduk, Alyscia Richards, Emma Strauss Schubert, and Mary Acri, “Noncitizen voting rights in the global era: A literature review and analysis,” Journal of International Migration and Integration 21 (2020): 949–71.

44 Patrick Flavin and Gregory Shufeldt, “Explaining state preemption of local laws: Political, institutional, and demographic factors,” Publius: The Journal of Federalism 50, no. 2 (2020): 280–309.

45 Carol Anderson, One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy (London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018); Jim Downs, ed., Voter Suppression in U.S. Elections (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2020).

46 Chris Lehmann, “How the ‘Brooks Brothers Riot’ Set the Stage for Insurrection,” The Nation Magazine, August 4, 2022. https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/brooks-brothers-riot/ Michael E. Miller, “How the ‘Brooks Brothers Riot’ Killed the 2000 Recount in Miami,” The Washington Post, November 15, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2018/11/15/its-insanity-how-brooks-brothers-riot-killed-recount-miami/ Adam Gabbott, “Two decades after the ‘Brooks Brothers riot’, experts fear graver election threats,” The Guardian, September 24, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/24/us-elections-2020-violence-fears-brooks-brothers-riot.

47 Francis Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Why Americans Still Don’t Vote; Hayduk, Gatekeepers to the Franchise.

48 Frances Fox Piven, Lorraine Carol Minnite, and Margaret Groarke, Keeping Down the Black Vote: Race and the Demobilization of American Voters (New York, NY: New Press, 2009); Margaret Groarke, “The Impact of Voter Fraud Claims on Voter Registration Reform Legislation” Political Science Quarterly 131, no. 3 (2016): 571–95; Lorraine C. Minnite, The Myth of Voter Fraud (Cornell, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011); Hayduk, Gatekeepers to the Franchise.

49 Carol Anderson, One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy (London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018).

50 Shannon Portillo, Domonic Bearfield, and Norma Riccucci, “The disenfranchisement of Voters of Color: Redux,” Public integrity 23, no. 2 (2021): 111–28.

51 Amy Gardner and Isaac Arnsdorf, “GOP report shows plan to ramp up focus on disproven election fraud claims,” Washington Post, January 31, 2023. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/31/republican-report-election-fraud/.

52 Brendan Fischer and Ed Pilkington, “Rightwing Group Pours Millions in ‘Dark Money’ Into US Voter Suppression Bid,” Documented.Net in partnership with The Guardian, January 20, 2023. https://documented.net/reporting/heritage-action-spent-millions-lobbying-as-it-undermined-freedom-to-vote.

53 Reece Jones, White Borders: The History of Race and Immigration in the United States from Chinese Exclusion to the Border Wall (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2021).

54 Caitlin Andrews, “Maine effort to bar noncitizens from voting linked to national 2020 push from conservatives,” Bangor Daily News, August 13, 2019.

55 Southeast Texas Record Staff Writer, “Group urges Gov. Abbott to amend Texas Constitution to preserve citizen voting,” Southeast Texas Record, October 8, 2023. https://setexasrecord.com/stories/650071532-group-urges-gov-abbott-to-amend-texas-constitution-to-preserve-citizen-voting.

56 Ballotpedia, “Citizen Voters, Inc,” 2023. https://ballotpedia.org/Citizen_Voters,_Inc.

57 Mychael Schnell, “House Passes Resolutions to Block DC Noncitizen Voting Bill,” The Hill, February 9, 2023. https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3852191-house-passes-resolutions-to-block-dc-noncitizen-voting-bill-criminal-code/. On January 12, 2023, Senator Tom Cotton (Republican, Arkansas) and Representative James Comer (Republican, Kentucky) introduced a joint resolution to overturn the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2022, a law enacted by the council in October 2022.

58 Global News Aggregator, “House votes to overturn D.C.’s illegal immigrant voting plan, Democratic Voice USA, February 12, 2023. https://democraticvoiceusa.com/2023/02/12/house-votes-to-overturn-d-c-s-illegal-immigrant-voting-plan/

59 Tucker Carlson Tonight, February 14, 2023, Interview with Representative Thomas Massie. https://www.foxnews.com/video/6320420576112.

60 Democracy Now, February 10, 2023. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/2/10/headlines/eleanor_holmes_norton_calls_out_gop_racism_as_us_house_blocks_2_washington_dc_bills.

61 Huyen Pham and Pham Hoang Van, “The Immigrant Climate Index” (ICI) 2021. https://vpham415.github.io/ICI/.

62 Ballotpedia, “Party Control of Florida,” 2023. https://ballotpedia.org/Party_control_of_Florida_state_government.

63 De Santis Staff, “Governor Ron DeSantis Signs Strongest Anti-Illegal Immigration Legislation in the Country to Combat Biden’s Border Crisis,” May 10, 2023. https://www.flgov.com/2023/05/10/governor-ron-desantis-signs-strongest-anti-illegal-immigration-legislation-in-the-country-to-combat-bidens-border-crisis/.

64 Steve Contorno, “Immigration a top issue for Republican governor candidates … but what can they actually do about it? Tampa Bay Times, July 18, 2018.

65 Southern Poverty Law Center, “Hate Groups in Florida,” 2023. https://www.splcenter.org/states/florida

66 FLIMEN’s website can be found here, https://www.flimen.org/, and Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100069552655726

67 True the Vote, “Sheriff’s Toolkit,” found here: https://www.truethevote.org/sheriffs-toolkit/.

68 Department of Justice, “Former Leader of Proud Boys Pleads Guilty to Seditious Conspiracy for Efforts to Stop Transfer of Power Following 2020 Presidential Election,” October 6, 2022.

69 CBS Miami Team, “Broward School Board member receiving backlash for attending rally that welcomed Proud Boys,” December 9, 2022.

70 Aja Romano, “The right’s moral panic over “grooming” invokes age-old homophobia,” Vox.com, April 21, 2022.

71 Tiffany Razzano, “2 FL Oath Keepers Convicted In Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol Attack: Report,” The Patch, January 23, 2023.

72 Hatewatch Staff, “Oathkeepers Promise to Patrol the Polls on Election Day” Southern Poverty Law Center October 26, 2016.

73 Frank Cerabino, “School Announcement Outside Jail? High Cost of Politicizing School Boards in Florida,” Palm Beach Post, December 7, 2022.

74 Contorno, “Immigration a Top Issue for Republican Governor Candidates … But What Can They Actually Do About It?”

75 Fredreka Shouten, “Florida House Passes Bill Creating Election Police Force,” CNN, March 9, 2022.

76 A full text of Florida Senate Bill 524 can be found at https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/524/BillText/Filed/PDF.

77 Amy Garner and Alice Crites, “Secret Donors and Trump Allies: Inside the Operation to Push Noncitizen Voting Laws in Florida and Other States,” Washington Post, July 22, 2019.

78 Skyler Swisher and Aric Chokey, “From ‘Wife Swap’ to Florida Politics, Couple Leads Push for Voter Referendum that Targets Fears of Noncitizens Voting,” Sun Sentinel, March 15, 2019.

79 Mary Ellen Klas and Samantha J. Gross, “Non-Citizens Can’t Vote In Florida. So Why Is This Group Trying To Ban It…Again?” Tampa Bay Times, July 19, 2019.

80 Patti Nieberg, “Colorado, Two Other States Pass Amendments Clarifying that “Only Citizens” Can Vote,” Associated Press, November 8, 2020.

81 Ballotpedia 2023, Florida Amendment 1, Citizen Requirement for Voting Initiative.

82 C.A Bridges, Thao Nyuyen, Rick Neale, “Florida Lawmakers Denounce Antisemitic Incidents Over Labor Day Weekend: ‘Hate Has No Place Here’,” USA Today, September 6, 2023.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ron Hayduk

Ron Hayduk is Professor of Political Science at San Francisco State University. Hayduk’s published books include Immigrant Crossroads: Globalization, Incorporation, and Placemaking in Queens, New York (co-edited, Temple University Press 2021), Democracy for All: Restoring Immigrant Voting Rights in the United States (Routledge 2006) and Gatekeepers to the Franchise: Shaping Election Administration in New York (Northern Illinois University Press 2005). His research has appeared in the Journal of International Migration and Integration, New Political Science, Cosmopolitan Civil Societies, Socialism and Democracy and Dialectical Anthropology, and in popular venues such as Jacobin and the Los Angeles Times.

Anthony Pahnke

Anthony Pahnke is an Associate Professor of International Relations at San Francisco State University. His books include Brazil’s Long Revolution: Radical Achievements of the Landless Workers Movement (2018) and Agrarian Crisis in the United States: Pathways for Reform (2023). Pahnke’s scholarly work has appeared in New Political Science, International Studies Review, and Rethinking Marxism and his writing on immigration and politics has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Progressive, and The Hill.