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Constitutional Law: Voting rights (Part Six)

Constitutional Law: Voting rights (Part Six)

Released Friday, 13th May 2022
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Constitutional Law: Voting rights (Part Six)

Constitutional Law: Voting rights (Part Six)

Constitutional Law: Voting rights (Part Six)

Constitutional Law: Voting rights (Part Six)

Friday, 13th May 2022
Good episode? Give it some love!
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Overseas and nonresident citizens.

U.S. citizens residing overseas who would otherwise have the right to vote are guaranteed the right to vote in federal elections by the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) of 1986. As a practical matter, individual states implement UOCAVA.

A citizen who has never resided in the United States can vote if a parent is eligible to vote in certain states. In some of these states the citizen can vote in local, state, and federal elections, in others in federal elections only.

Voting rights of U.S. citizens who have never established residence in the U.S. vary by state and may be impacted by the residence history of their parents.

U.S. territories.

U.S. citizens and non-citizen nationals who reside in American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, or the United States Virgin Islands are not allowed to vote in U.S. national and presidential elections, as these U.S. territories belong to the United States but do not have presidential electors. The U.S. Constitution requires a voter to be resident in one of the 50 states or in the District of Columbia to vote in federal elections. To say that the Constitution does not require extension of federal voting rights to U.S. territories residents does not, however, exclude the possibility that the Constitution may permit their enfranchisement under another source of law. Statehood or a constitutional amendment would allow people in the U.S. territories to vote in federal elections.

Like the District of Columbia, territories of the United States do not have U.S. senators representing them in the senate, and they each have one member of the House of Representatives who is not allowed to vote.

These voting restrictions have been challenged in a series of lawsuits in the 21st century. In 2015, residents of Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands joined as plaintiffs in Segovia v Board of Election Commissioners (2016). The participants had all formerly lived in Illinois, but because of a change of residency to an unincorporated territory were no longer able to vote. Their claim was that the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, as it is implemented, violates the Equal Protection Clause. At issue was that Illinois, the former residence of all of the plaintiffs, allowed residents of the Northern Mariana Islands who had formerly lived in Illinois to vote as absentee voters, but denied former residents living in other unincorporated territories the same right. The US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ruled in 2016 that under the Absentee Voting Act, former residents of US states are entitled to vote in elections of the last jurisdiction in which they qualified to vote, as long as they reside in a foreign location. Using rational basis review, the court stated that the Northern Mariana Islands had a unique relationship with the United States and could be treated differently. It further pointed out that as the law does not differentiate between residents within a territory, as to who formerly resided in a state, but all are treated equally, no violation occurred. The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit concurred with the decision, but dismissed the case for lack of standing because the application of the Absentee Voting Act in Illinois is a state issue.

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