To kick off Louisville’s annual WorldFest last week, the Muhammad Ali Center hosted a naturalization ceremony alongside the festivities. Seventy-seven people from 33 countries including Sudan, Guatemala, Canada and Vietnam became United States citizens.
After the ceremony, voting advocates lined the room to encourage the new Americans to register to vote. By the end of the day, more than a third of them did, according to League of Women Voters co-president Gail Henson.
“We want them to have access to the process of decision-making,” Henson said as she watched people fill out voter registration forms. “We want them to have a voice in housing, education, essential services, all those things that make a community great.”
About 179,800 Kentucky residents are immigrants, according to the American Immigration Council. More than 75,000 of them are eligible to vote in the commonwealth.
State Rep. Nima Kulkarni, a Louisville Democrat who is running for reelection, is the founder of the New Americans Initiative, a nonprofit organization that supports immigrants on their pathway to citizenship.
“The lifeblood of a healthy democracy is an informed and engaged electorate, and new Americans are a big part of that, a big and growing part of that electorate.” Kulkarni said.
Kulkarni said all Kentucky voters have a lot to think about heading into the November election, especially at the state level.
There will be two Constitutional amendments on Kentucky ballots. One of them is Amendment 1, which would codify a ban on people who aren’t citizens voting in the state.
Those people already can’t vote in Kentucky, and Kulkarni said noncitizen voting is rare.
“I know our Secretary of State, our Board of Elections, our county clerks, are very diligent, and we should trust them, because they're not just letting anybody vote,” Kulkarni said. “They vet individuals, they make sure [Kentuckians] are actually eligible.”
Kulkarni said she thinks Amendment 1 is based on confusion.
“It's been sort of conflated with this idea of election fraud and people trying to steal elections, and it's really undermining faith in our democratic institutions,” she said.
The proposed amendment follows a national GOP-led push to stop noncitizens from voting in federal elections, which has been illegal since 1996.
Kentucky isn’t the only state with this kind of legislation on the ballot. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Arizona Republicans, allowing state election officials to reject voter registration forms that don’t include a proof of citizenship.
Critics say this would make voting more difficult for many eligible voters. In a study from earlier this year, 1 in 10 voters said they could not easily show proof of their U.S. citizenship.
Earlier this year, U.S. House Speaker Republican Mike Johnson and former President Donald Trump, both Republicans, touted legislation that would create new documentation requirements for voters. Johnson said the legislation would prevent election fraud he said is “growing” because of illegal immigrants crossing the southern border.
This article is also part of U.S. Democracy Day, a nationwide collaborative on Sept. 15, the International Day of Democracy, in which news organizations cover how democracy works and the threats it faces. To learn more, visit usdemocracyday.org.
