An effort to write a ban on noncitizen voting into the Georgia Constitution fell short of the two-thirds majority it needed to advance in the state House on Thursday.
State law already requires voters to be U.S. citizens, but a constitutional amendment would have prevented the Georgia General Assembly from allowing noncitizens to participate at some point in the future. No legislator has proposed a bill that would allow noncitizen voting in Georgia.
Republicans supported the election-year proposal, saying it was needed to prevent cities from allowing noncitizen voting in local elections, as is done in Boston and San Francisco.
“We all know how important the vote is,” said state Rep. Jesse Petrea, a Republican from Savannah. “The right thing to do is make sure we’re clear and unambiguous in our constitution that only citizens should vote.”
The Georgia Constitution currently says that citizens are entitled to vote. The proposed amendment, House Resolution 780, would have changed the constitution’s language to say that only citizens can vote.
Amending the Georgia Constitution requires a two-thirds majority in each chamber of the General Assembly, but the proposal only received 98 votes out of the House’s 180 members. All Republicans voted in favor of the measure and all Democrats were opposed.
“Read the state constitution. It is very very clear. This is unnecessary,” said state Rep. Sam Park, a Democrat from Lawrenceville.
If the resolution had passed the House, it would have still faced an uncertain path in the state Senate, where a similar proposal failed two years ago. Then it would have needed support from a majority of Georgia voters in a referendum.
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