Let me get this straight. Portland Mayor Ethan Strimling and City Councilor Pious Ali are resurrecting the twice-turned-down proposal to allow legal residents who are not U.S. citizens the right to vote in local elections? How about they first consider extending the same consideration to the hundreds of thousands of Maine homeowners and landowners who are already U.S. citizens but are only seasonal residents of the state?
Oh, wait! That’s right! Even though the hardworking people who own houses, land and businesses are U.S. citizens, they are not “legal” local residents and thus don’t ping as a concern on our elected officials’ radar. Taxing legal U.S. citizens from away, then preventing them from participating in the electoral process, is no way to run a state.
Whatever happened to “taxation without representation is tyranny”? I am not against having local residents who are not U.S. citizens vote in local elections. What I am against is continuing to allow the state of Maine to deny the heavily taxed seasonal (yet vested) residents the opportunity to chime in on how things are run in our fair state.
Timothy Fahey
Scarborough
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