RNC files lawsuit over noncitizen voting rights in Vermont’s largest city

The Republican National Committee launched a lawsuit this week seeking to ensure only citizens can vote in Burlington, Vermont, elections.

Residents of Burlington, the Green Mountain State’s largest city, approved the charter change in March 2023 that permits noncitizens to vote in municipal elections.

Vermont Republican Gov. Phil Scott later vetoed state approval of the measure, but was overridden by the legislature.

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The RNC said such elections influence Vermont’s education budget, which contradicts the state constitution’s requirement that only citizens can vote on matters affecting the state.

"Americans should decide American elections," RNC Chairman Michael Whatley said in a statement obtained by Fox News Digital.

"Democrats' persistent efforts to enable noncitizen voting dilute the voices of Americans in Vermont and across the country," he said.

In comments to Fox News, an RNC spokesperson added that Democrats’ "persistent efforts" to let noncitizens vote is "alarming."

"Combined with their catastrophic border crisis, noncitizens’ voting prioritizes illegal immigrants over U.S. citizens and jeopardizes our elections," the spokesperson said.

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While noncitizen suffrage remains illegal in federal-level elections, Burlington is not alone in permitting such.

In the Burlington suburb of Winooski, 11 people took advantage of the town’s "all-resident" voting policy, according to NPR.

Bordering Washington, D.C., the city of Takoma Park, Maryland, recently celebrated 30 years of being the first municipality in the nation where noncitizens are permitted to vote. 

A 2023 city statement on the matter said 20% of the approximately 350 noncitizens there cast ballots in the 2017 off-year elections.

Takoma Park’s 1992 policy change was notably spearheaded by resident and then-American University law professor Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md. 

It requires identification and proof of residency, according to a city statement.

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Washington, D.C., itself also allows noncitizen voting in municipal races.

In February, a New York State appeals court overturned New York City’s noncitizen suffrage provisions, while several states in the heartland banned the practice in the early 1900s.

In 2020, Florida and Alabama voters overwhelmingly approved state constitutional amendments by-referendum, declaring only citizens can vote within those states.

Politically, Burlington is otherwise best known as the city where high-profile Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., started his political career. The self-described "democratic socialist" served as the city’s mayor from 1981 to 1989.

Fox News Digital reached out to the city of Burlington for comment. A person who answered the phone at city hall directed Fox News Digital to a communications official who did not respond.

RNC to convene privately, resolution to call Donald Trump the ‘presumptive nominee’ removed

The Republican National Committee is meeting behind closed doors this week as some allies of Donald Trump had hoped to put the group's stamp on the former president early in the 2024 GOP presidential nominating campaign.

But a proposed resolution to declare Trump the presumptive nominee has been removed from the agenda before the committee is scheduled to meet in Las Vegas this week, party officials said.

The reversal comes as the first two early-state contests have winnowed the Republican campaign down to two major candidates, with Trump as the heavy favorite and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley vowing to continue her uphill challenge.

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What was expected to be an uneventful RNC winter meeting in Las Vegas this week briefly gained heightened attention last week after the resolution, introduced by Maryland Committeeman David Bossie, to name Trump the presumptive nominee became public.

Bossie was Trump's deputy campaign manager in 2016 and advised his team when Congress pursued a second impeachment after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Within hours of the resolution's leak, Trump batted down the proposal, which some members of the committee criticized publicly as premature.

"While they have far more votes than necessary to do it, I feel, for the sake of PARTY UNITY, that they should NOT go forward with this plan," Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social.

There is no formal RNC rule barring the party from declaring a presumptive nominee. And there is precedent for such a move. In 2016, then-RNC Chairman Reince Priebus declared Trump the presumptive nominee after the Indiana primary, though that was in May and Trump had battled Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for three months since Cruz finished first in the leadoff Iowa caucuses ahead of second-place Trump.

The Associated Press only uses the term once a candidate has captured the number of delegates needed to win a majority vote at the national party conventions this summer.

That point won’t come until after more states have voted. For both Republicans and Democrats, the earliest it could happen is March.

Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel suggested last week that Haley had no path to the nomination in light of Trump's majority vote totals in the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses and the Jan. 23 New Hampshire primary.

"We need to unite around our eventual nominee, which is going to be Donald Trump, and we need to make sure we beat Joe Biden," McDaniel said in a Fox News interview the night of the New Hampshire primary.

Haley said Sunday during an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" that the RNC was "clearly not" an honest broker "if you're going to go and basically tell the American people that you're going to go and decide who the nominee is after only two states have voted."

"The American people want to have their say in who is going to be their nominee," she said. "We need to give them that. I mean, you can’t do that based on just two states."

Stefanik at RNC says Democrat-led Trump impeachment effort was an attack on ‘your voice and your vote’

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