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Rethinking Democratic Belonging & the Ballot Box: Should Voting Rights Expand to Non-citizens?

Date
Tue May 9th 2023, 5:00 - 6:30pm
Event Sponsor
McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society
Location
Tresidder Memorial Union, Oak Lounge
Experience Type
In-Person

Event Description:

Please note that this event is in-person only, and RSVPs are required to attend.

You can RSVP HERE.

Movements are building across the US to expand voting rights in certain elections to non-citizens. While federal law prohibits non-citizens from voting at the national level, states and municipalities can in theory extend this right to non-citizens. This possibility has been the focus of local advocacy efforts in US cities, including in the Bay Area. It has also been an issue that political philosophers and theorists have taken up given the ethical questions at hand. Who has a stake in policy making, and what should follow from that? How should we think about the bundle of rights that come with citizenship, and voting’s place in this? And more broadly, how should we think about the benefits that accrue to citizens given high rates of immigration and, as some theorists argue, an ethical obligation to rethink what it means to belong in a community?

This event will bring together political theorists, legal theorists, and advocates to explore what is at stake in the idea of non-citizen voting. The panelists will explore dimensions of this idea from the perspective of local and state politics, the history of voting rights in the US and beyond, and moral claims about affected interests and belonging.

Panelists:

Ron Hayduk is a Professor of Political Science at San Francisco State University. Hayduk has published several books and articles on political participation and immigration, including Democracy for All: Restoring Immigrant Voting Rights in the United States, and he created a website devoted to immigrant voting rights.

Sarah Song is a Professor of Law, Philosophy, and Political Science at UC Berkeley with a special interest in issues of democracy, citizenship, and migration. She is the author of Justice, Gender, and the Politics of Multiculturalism and Immigration and Democracy.

Harsha Walia is a Canadian activist and writer who has been active in migrant justice, Indigenous solidarity, feminist, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist movements for over a decade. Walia is a prolific writer including two recent books entitled Undoing Border Imperialism and Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism.

Annette Wong is the Director of Programs at Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA) where she oversees community initiatives that support Chinese immigrant community members becoming community and civic leaders. Wong has been involved in the immigrant rights movement for over 15 years, working on immigration at the intersections, including language access, economic justice, and immigrant voting.

Moderator: Joseph Cloward, Political Science (graduate student) / Stanford