Federal law restricts voting in federal elections to U.S. citizens, and most states extend that to state elections. But a small number of municipalities — including parts of Maryland, Vermont, and historically San Francisco for school-board elections — allow some noncitizen residents to vote in purely local races. New York City passed and then had struck down a broader municipal-noncitizen-voting law.
Supporters argue that long-term residents — green-card holders, work-visa holders, parents of citizen children — pay local taxes, send their kids to local schools, and are deeply embedded in their communities. Allowing them to vote in school-board or municipal races, they argue, follows a long American tradition of property-tax-paying noncitizens voting locally (which existed in many states until the early 20th century).
Critics argue that voting is a core privilege of citizenship and should not be diluted; that mixing citizen and noncitizen voters on a single ballot creates administrative confusion; and that extending the franchise to noncitizens undermines incentives to naturalize and shifts political power toward immigrant-heavy areas in ways that distort representation.