NORTHAMPTON — The Charter Review Committee unanimously voted on Tuesday to recommend that the city allow noncitizens to vote in municipal elections.
“It’s one way that a local community can send, I think, a very powerful message at a time when at the federal level there’s such divisive and hateful policies,” committee chairman Stanley Moulton said of the change.
The committee is working on recommended changes to the city charter, a draft of which includes lowering the voting age to 16 and making the city clerk an appointed position.
The Pioneer Valley Workers Center brought the idea of extending voting rights to noncitizens to the committee.
By the end of the year, the committee will finalize a report with its recommended changes, which must be approved by the City Council and Mayor David Narkewicz before moving on to the state Legislature. Under state law, only U.S. citizens can vote, so the state would have to grant Northampton an exception, according to Narkewicz.
Several Massachusetts municipalities, such as Amherst, have passed measures that would allow noncitizens to vote, but the state has not granted any exceptions to the law.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Northampton resident Marc Warner told the committee to hold off on including the voting change in the recommendations because he worries it would impede the passage of the less controversial charter changes.
Sam Hopper, a committee member, addressed his concerns by saying that she has researched the process of amending a charter.
“There’s no one way to do it,” she said. “There are several ways to do it where the municipality actually gets a big say in how it moves forward. I don’t think that’s a reason to not put it forward.”
Many people spoke in support of the idea, including City Council candidates and a representative from the city’s Human Rights Commission.
Diana Sierra Becerra, a Northampton resident and Smith College lecturer, urged the council to support the measure.
“I was undocumented from 1994 to 2012,” she said. “I obtained citizenship two years ago. I feel that as someone with that experience, I know what it’s like to live in a community or to live in a country that consistently disenfranchises you and prevents you from making decisions that directly impact your life.”
Another immigrant, who spoke in Spanish through a translator and did not give her last name, said, “Us immigrants, we are people, too — and we’re trying to live our best lives.”
Greta Jochem can be reached at gjochem@gazettenet.com.