Memories: When Illegal Aliens Could Vote in Arlington, Va.

By David North on May 20, 2014

Once upon a time illegal aliens could vote in some local elections in my town, Arlington, Va., across the Potomac from Washington, D.C.

Whether they actually did so is doubtful, but they could have done so, but only every other year.
They can't any more, and the story of why that is true is characteristic of the odd, and not necessarily rational, way public policy sometimes develops. It also reflects the decentralized way American elections are run and a peculiar local political situation of about 25 years ago.

Here are the underlying facts:

  1. In Virginia school boards can be elected, if the locality so chooses, and if so, this is done on a non-partisan basis.
  2. Political parties can endorse school board candidates, though the endorsements do not appear on the ballots.
  3. Such endorsements are worked out by the parties themselves – as in our national presidential
    conventions - with no governmental rules.

These background facts applied, and apply, to all of Virginia. Now, let's get to the special factors in Arlington, which is one of those very liberal enclaves like New York's Upper West Side or San Francisco. Further, being, as it is, adjacent to the District of Columbia, there is an abundance of federal civil servants, whose political activities are limited by the federal Hatch Act.

Given the last variable, and given the fact that many federal employees were interested in county government, there was, decades ago, a widespread movement to get around the Hatch Act (which deals with parties) by creating a liberal-leaning, non-partisan local entity for handling county politics. It was called Arlingtonians for a Better County (obviously ABC), and an ABC member could work for the feds and campaign for local office without violating the Hatch Act.

As a result of all this, ABC dominated Arlington government some 30 years ago.

After a while ABC's officeholders grew too big for their collective britches, and partisan
Democrats ultimately replaced them in elected county offices – but the ABC lingered for a time as a political force.

(How does all this local political history relate to illegal aliens? We are getting there.)

Meanwhile, when the County recaptured the right to an elective school board (taken away years earlier by the state when the county started complying with Brown v. Board of Education), the question arose, how were the liberal forces going to effectively endorse school board candidates if they were split between the declining ABC and the resurgent Democrats.
The two factions quickly worked it out this way: there were annual school board elections, and every year the endorsing entity would be alternate between ABC and the Democratic Party. Each faction would conduct a "fire house primary" (i.e. one run by the party, not by state law) and each of those primaries would be managed according to the rules of the entity in charge that year. Whoever won had the endorsement of both ABC and the Democrats, and was thus highly likely to win in the fall.

The Democrats decided that the participants at their events would be enrolled voters who signed a pledge to support the winners of the firehouse primary. ABC had a looser standard; its voters would be any Arlington residents who were ABC members, and one could sign up on the day of the primary, paying a nominal $1 or so membership fee, or maybe even that could be waived. I forget.

Ah, but who could join ABC? Its leaders decided that anyone who lived in the county and signed up was eligible, with no regard to either citizenship or registered-voter status. So an illegal alien who wanted to could vote. No questions asked.

I voted in one of those ABC primaries decades ago and asked about the extent to which illegal aliens did, in fact, vote. No formal records were kept, of course – that would have been politically incorrect – but the people in charge at the primary told me that they knew of none.

Asked if other non-citizens participated in these contests, they told me that a small group of
British Embassy wives (with kids in the local school system) were known to have voted, but not their spouses. That was about it.

ABC no longer plays a role in Arlington politics. Some years ago the usually outgunned local Republican Party organized a stealth ABC membership campaign, took over the entity in a membership election, and the organization all but vanished.

And with ABC's effective departure, the opportunity for illegal aliens to vote – if only in a primary regarding school board members – went away. Denying the illegals a vote, as you can see, was not a very deliberate process.

I was reminded of all this on Saturday, when I voted for a school board endorsement, at the Democratic firehouse primary. I found, as I expected, that you have to be a registered voter to take part. The volunteers checked their computerized lists of voters before handing you the ticket that you could exchange for the ballot. So no illegals, and no embassy wives, could take part.

A firehouse primary – the formal term is "unassembled caucus" – at least in Arlington, is an attractive symbol of democracy at work. Everyone involved is a volunteer; no tax funds are used at all. The whole thing is beautifully organized and one moves in and out of the high school cafeteria smoothly and swiftly. They are often used to select the party's choices for other offices as well as the school board.

I actually look forward to them.

Topics: Politics