IMMIGRANT VOTING RIGHTS IN FLORIDA

The Immigrant Voting Project and
New York University Law Students for Human Rights

Resident Noncitizen Voting in Florida:
A History

Although Florida required U.S. citizenship for voters in the Constitutions of 1838 and 1865,[1] the state introduced declarant alien voting in the Reconstruction-era Constitution of 1868, granting suffrage to “[e]very male person of the age of twenty-one years and upwards, of whatever race, color, nationality, or previous condition, or who shall, at the time of offering to vote, be a citizen of the United States, or who shall have declared his intention to become such in conformity to the laws of the United States” and who met residency requirements.[2]  Scholars speculate that the motivation for states such as Florida to enact declarant alien voting in the post-Civil War period stemmed from their need to repopulate their territory with new settlers after the devastation of the war.[3] 

Florida again included a revised version of its declarant alien voting provision in its Constitution of 1885.  However, a constitutional amendment in 1894 ended non-citizen voting, declaring that:

“Every male person of the age of twenty-one years and upwards, that shall, at the time of registration, be a citizen of the United States, and that shall have [met residency requirements], shall in such county be deemed a qualified elector at all elections under this Constitution.  Naturalized citizens of the United States at the time of and before registration shall produce to the registration officer his certificate of naturalization or a duly certified copy thereof.”[4]

Florida’s current Constitution, originally adopted in 1968, today provides that, “Every citizen of the United States who is at least eighteen years of age and who is a permanent resident of the state, if registered as provided by law, shall be an elector of the county where registered.”[5]  The state’s elections law reiterates the citizenship requirement, providing that, “A person may become a registered voter only if that person [i]s a citizen of the United States.”[6]

REFERENCES

[1] Fla. Const. of 1838, Art. VI, Sec. 1; Fla. Const. of 1865, Art. VI, Sec. 1.

[2] Fla. Const. of 1868, Art. XV, Sec. 1.  Reproduced in Francis Thorpe, The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters, and Other Organic Laws of the States, Territories, and Colonies Now or Heretofore Forming the United States of America, 719-720 (1909). 

[3] Virginia Harper-Ho, Noncitizen Voting Rights: The History, the Law and Current Prospects for Change, 18 Law & Ineq. J. 271, 281 (Summer 2000).

[4] Amendment adopted 1894, replacing Art. VI of the Fla. Const. of 1885.  Reproduced in Francis Thorpe, The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters, and Other Organic Laws of the States, Territories, and Colonies Now or Heretofore Forming the United States of America, 763 (1909). 

[5] Fla. Const. Art. VI, § 2 (as amended through 2004).   

[6] West's F.S.A. § 97.041.

 

 

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