MA politicians: Russians, don’t mess with our elections, but come vote in them!

Massachusetts is an odd place politically. One week we have prominent Democratic politicians asking for President Trump to add sanctions and condemn Russia for interfering in our elections and the next week they are pushing to allow Russians to vote in our municipal elections. Locally, Congressmen Keating made a statement calling for sanctions:

“Just last month, President Trump ignored Congress’s directive to impose sanctions on Russia due in part to election interference. In light of today’s indictments, I am calling on him to impose those sanctions that were approved overwhelmingly by both houses of Congress.”

You can read his full statement here.

We’ve all heard that 13 Russians have been indicted by special prosecutor Robert Mueller for mostly posting ads on Facebook to undermine our election process. What’s interesting is Rob Goldman, Facebook’s Vice President of Ads, stated that most of the Russian ad spend was after the election and Russia’s main goal was not to sway the election, but the mainstream media ignored it. Here’s his tweet:

It seems that Democrats and supporting media outlets are ignoring these important facts while the politicians are pushing for non-US citizens to vote. 11 Massachusetts Democrats are pushing to have non-US citizens, which include Russians, to vote in municipal elections.

The key part of the bill:

“Notwithstanding the provisions of section one of chapter fifty-one of the general laws or any other general or special law to the contrary, non-citizens, 18 years of age or older, residing in a city or town that accepts section 1G, inclusive, may upon application have their names entered on a list of voters established by the municipal election officials, and may thereafter vote in any municipal election for school committee, school committee questions, city council and board of selectmen for so long as they remain domiciled in the municipality.”

Even the Boston City Council President is calling for non-citizens to vote in Boston elections:

“Boston City Council President Andrea Campbell wants to let non-citizens vote in Boston’s municipal elections — possibly including illegal immigrants — and she’s planning to hold a hearing on the issue.

“I want to have conversations about how non-citizens can fully participate and come out of the shadows to do so,” Campbell said. “These residents generate millions in taxes coming from folks who are identified as undocumented, DACA, legal permanent residents as well as having green cards. We should be open-minded and keep it open as to how they could participate.”

While federal law prohibits non-US citizens from voting in federal elections, it doesn’t prohibit them from voting in state and local elections. You might be surprised to know that 11 municipal governments, 10 of them in Maryland, currently allow non-citizens to vote in local elections.

The questions I have is if you are so angry and concerned with foreign influence in American elections, why would you want non-US citizens to vote in local elections? Couldn’t foreign governments influence their citizens to vote in a specific way?

It’s interesting to note that according to ameredia.com the “Russian American population is estimated at approximately 2.9 million people. Second largest ethnic market representing 10.3% (2.9 Million people) of the total foreign-born population of 28.4 million. The leading ethnic group is Mexicans that represent 28% or 7.8 million of all US foreign-born population.”

Yes, Massachusetts is an odd place politically – worried about Russians influencing elections one minute and pushing to let them vote in our elections the next.