The Founding Fathers respected states’ rights to expand the vote to noncitizens. Today’s voters should too.

The first U.S. Congress to ever meet did something that few people today might think possible: it passed a law allowing noncitizens to vote. In readopting the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, members of the Founding Congress declared that noncitizens could vote in federal territories northwest of the Ohio river. Then they went further, allowing noncitizens to vote in the first state constitutional conventions held in those territories. It was hardly remarkable at the time. Many of the original 13 states had allowed noncitizens to vote since colonial times, and with the Founders’ encouragement, many new states admitted after the Constitution was ratified allowed noncitizens to vote as well.

This forgotten history may seem surprising today. But back then, the Founders considered it patriotic to fully welcome immigrants into this blossoming country by giving them a voice in their communities. Noncitizens continued voting throughout much of the United States for over 100 years, helping to shape the country from its birth through the early 20th Century. Many American citizens today have forefathers who immigrated to this country and were honored with the right to vote.

Voters should continue to respect the traditional freedom of states and local governments to expand the right to vote, including to noncitizens if they wish. But a new anti-voter movement, spearheaded by Citizen Voters, Inc. and its shadowy political donors, has declared this tradition is wrong. Although no state has allowed noncitizens to vote in state or federal races since 1926, this movement wants to stamp out all remnants of America’s noncitizen suffrage. Their plan? Amend state constitutions to take away the freedom of cities, towns, and school boards to decide for themselves whether noncitizens can vote in local races.

This movement just landed a major victory, securing enough petition signatures to put such a constitutional amendment on Florida’s 2020 election ballot. This is happening even though only a tiny handful of localities, most of them in Maryland, allow noncitizens to vote in local races. Florida, along with all of its cities and school boards, chose to abandon America’s heritage of noncitizen voting well before this movement began.

This raises some obvious questions: why are political elites suddenly spending millions of dollars to start a new battle over noncitizen voting? Especially in a state like Florida, where noncitizens already cannot vote at any level? Is the real goal to prey on unfounded fears of noncitizens, encouraging voters to turn out at the polls and vote for anti-immigration candidates? Such a ploy would have been unfathomable to the Founders, who refused to use noncitizens as political pawns and honored them with the right to vote.

Even those who disagree with noncitizen voting have a strong reason to reject these constitutional amendments: protecting their own right to vote. Although it might seem harmless for states to constitutionally prohibit noncitizen voting in places where noncitizens already cannot vote, it’s far from it. America has a history of political elites taking cherished freedoms away from people they disfavor. The antidote has often been opposition at the state and local levels. But by using state constitutional amendments, this new anti-voter movement seeks to prevent state legislatures and localities from ever overturning new bans on voting. Weaponizing state constitutions against some voters creates a dangerous precedent that threatens all voters. If state and local governments can no longer safeguard the right to vote for one group, there’s no telling whose right to vote could be next.

Voters can prevent this slippery slope by embracing America’s proud tradition of allowing communities to enfranchise noncitizens. Floridians—and voters in other states that may soon consider similar proposals—should see this new anti-voter movement for what it is and vote down its unpatriotic state constitutional amendments. It might sound old fashioned, but the Founding Fathers respected states’ rights to expand the vote to noncitizens. Today’s voters should too.