We’ve gotten a number of well-reasoned and thoughtful responses to my post yesterday on non-citizen voting and the concept of citizenship itself. First from TPM Readers AK and JC, US expats living in Toronto …
As long time readers, my partner and I were surprised and disappointed in your response to the New York proposal. It seems to be based more on a gut response than any evidence around civic engagement (one of us is currently working on a PhD centering on civic engagement and community development, so this isn’t exactly uninformed opinion). We are US citizens living in Toronto for the next several years (see aforementioned PhD program), so perhaps we offer a useful perspective on a similar situation. Not to conflate the two cities, but there are enough similarities that comparisons are in several ways apt. Sitting here on the other side of the border, unable to contribute to the governance of a city we’ll call our home for enough years that we’ll be materially affected by the decisions of local policymakers, it’s a little easier to see some of the merits to New York’s proposal.
