Jason Chavez will assume his seat as a member of the Minneapolis City Council in less than two weeks. He said he’ll use his power to pursue voting rights for non-citizens.
Even though the Minnesota Constitution is clear that all voters in state and local elections must have “been a citizen of the United States for three months,” Chavez told Axios that he’s already in the process of exploring a way to allow non-citizens to vote. Minneapolis alone is home to about 30,000 non-citizens, Axios reports.
For scale, about 140,000 of the city’s roughly 420,000 residents voted in the last mayoral election. The sudden addition of another 30,000 non-citizen voters could have a massive impact on the character of Minneapolis politics.
Chavez is not alone, though. Several other municipalities around the U.S. have found ways to allow non-citizens to vote, most notably New York City, which very recently gave almost a million non-citizens the right to vote in local elections, despite this new policy’s apparent contradiction with the state constitution.
The young council member-elect also wants to end Minneapolis’s cooperation with federal law enforcement agents seeking to enforce immigration laws and use taxpayer dollars to pay “undocumented” immigrants’ legal fees. Specifically, he says on his website that the city should “provide an immigration fund for immigrants to receive the right to counsel, immigration lawyers, and assist with fees pertaining to anything immigration related that would support our undocumented, refugee and immigrant community.”
This is far from Chavez’s only controversial position. He also thinks white people need to “start putting ultimatums” on family members to prevent them from supporting conservative candidates for office. He said white people need to apply the same ruthless pressure seen in online political discourse to members of their own household.
No matter what happens I’m going to need white people to step it up and start putting ultimatums on your family. You didn’t vote for trump? Cool but your family did. Y’all be going harder on people online but silent on your family.
— Jason Chavez, 9th Ward CM-Elect (@ChavezForWard9) November 4, 2020
Although he is a homosexual, Chavez has also made enemies inside the “LGBT community,” apparently over issues of race:
White Gays be like …. pic.twitter.com/lAby41fypm
— Jason Chavez, 9th Ward CM-Elect (@ChavezForWard9) July 12, 2020
Kyle Hooten
Kyle Hooten is Managing Editor of Alpha News. His coverage of Minneapolis has been featured on television shows like Tucker Carlson Tonight and in print media outlets like the Wall Street Journal.
