I've lived in various European cities where I was not able to vote for various reasons. Such as living hotel long-term, living in a holiday home, being semi-homeless, sub-letting, crashing on someones couch. Seasonal workers, migrant workers or people with unstable employment are typically in this situation.
What do you think makes someone who’s pretty much just passing by entitled to push their opinions on the locals who’ve lived there their entire lives? Especially when that person
likely won’t suffer the longterm consequences of it
I get the sentiment about "why would I let people who aren't going to stay long term decide how the city is run?" but in the end it creates a city that is indifferent or even hostile to people in that situation. It ends up disenfranchising a population that will always be there, even if the people who make up that population is constantly changing.
Thank you. I know people who have lived in Amsterdam for over five years but can't vote for local politics because of their legal status or because they are illegally subletting due to the shitty housing market in The Netherlands.
Don't complain about people not being engaged with local politics if you don't allow them to vote.
The ones who will “always be there” can get their papers for permanent residence done and vote. If they don’t want to (or can’t since they don’t have the legal grounds to even stay there for longer), then they shouldn’t have a say on decisions that can permanently change things about the place.
There will always be the population of people who will be in short term housing or similar situations, but due to their circumstances the individual people will come and go. 5 years from now the makeup of the itinerant population may be almost entirely different, but the people in that population are in the same circumstances, especially if they don't have any political representation.
Who is going to speak for the people who aren't allowed to vote?
In my country, citizens without a permanent address (which is very few people, those who have no place of theirs mostly register at someone elses for easier administration) can still sign up and vote, so that leaves us with just the people who don’t have the permits to even stay here permanently.
I’m also not expecting to fly to country X, book an airbnb for 6 months or get a summer job, and then just somehow be entitled to vote there.
That is only possible with stable and legal housing. Not everyone is privileged to be in that situation, especially not with the housing market in many countries.
With your thinking you are creating a class of subhumans where you enjoy the benefits of their labour but you are not allowing them to vote. Like African Americans in the US not that long ago.
A yes, why didn't I think of that! Let me just completely ignore the broken housing market, the 15+ year waiting list for social housing and scrape together... lets checks... €400k for a small appartement with a 45 minute commute to work.
Do you have any clue how privileged you sound here? This is peak "have you tried not being poor" attitude.
While I don't know about European countries, given this is an article about America it's worth pointing out that you can, in fact, vote in the US while homeless[0], using a friend/family's home, shelter, or religious center as your address.
Actually yes, that is by design. There is a reason the US had property ownership as a requirement to vote in the constitution. Whether removing that requirement was correct or not is up for debate. But there is a distinction in a democracy between an active citizen and a passive citizen. An active citizen is someone that has skin in the game and is a willing participant in the process. A passive citizen is someone that does not engage in the process, or does not actively have skin in the game. The thought espoused in the enlightenment was that someone with property would be tied to the location long term and would therefore have interest in the long term success of that town/state/nation. Someone who is only in a town for a year doesn't meaningfully have stakes in the town. They don't really care if the schools aren't funded well enough, or if the roads don't have long term maintenance budget, they are only going to care about immediate needs. Someone with a house, that has children or grand children, they are going to not only care about now but 30 years from now as well.
Everyone affected by the laws passed have "skin in the game".
Someone renting an apartment and working a job in a community definitely has skin in the game in regards to local tax rates, building regulations, public amenities, etc.
Sure but there’s degrees to this. If you’re a day laborer renting a room at the local motel, it’s a lot easier for you to say “screw this place I’m going to the next town over” than for someone who has their kids enrolled in the highschool and a mortgage.
Everyone has skin in the game but some have way more.
Renters can also enroll their kids in public schools. And in terms of mobility, renters might be stuck in a one- or two-year lease, far longer than it might take to sell a house.
Maybe those transient homeowners are the ones who shouldn't get to vote...
It was because they thought that landowners would direct the votes of the people who lived on that land. The same reason was given for not allowing women to vote. https://shec.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/1645
Ancient democracies, including those of Greek city states like Athens, restricted voting to landowners because prior to the invention of the printing press, only aristocrats could understand the issues being voted on.
Yeah I know. My point is that in the US, in 2026, whether voting should be restricted to property owners is not "up for debate," except maybe among a certain set of cranks.
Eh, a growing set of cranks. The diversity of political opinion in America seems to have exploded over the last decade. Cranks are now serious contenders for power and influence.
> Ancient democracies, including those of Greek city states like Athens, restricted voting to landowners because prior to the invention of the printing press, only aristocrats could understand the issues being voted on.
This is such bullshit. Pre-literate societies were not ignorant societies, they were not stupid societies, they were not issue-free societies. The printing press gave rise to literacy which then gave rise to both books and print-based issue campaigning. But the idea that before people were able to read they were also unable to understand "the issues being voted on" is ridiculous. People ate, built, got sick, got hot, got cold, got injured, were richer or poorer ... everyone had a framework in which to understand "the issues being voted on".
You could argue it wasn't an educated understanding, and that might be correct depending on your understanding of what "education" is. But the idea that people couldn't actually understand stuff until literacy arrived is just ridiculous.
So are the justifications of Adams and Blackstone. Literacy was the justification given by early Greek democracies with written legal codes, though some, like Athens, later broadened eligibility.
There people have residency, they just don't live in a stable form of housing that allows them to register as living in the city. But some of them have lived in the city for years.
Whatever idea you have about how black Americans live is bizarre. And despite being ignorant of us, you attempt to silence discussions by acting like you are us.
I saw your other comment with regards to the Netherlands. If that’s where you’re located, you only need to have a stable location once. Then you can register. Another person can’t unregister you from there, so you can vote even if you then move to a hotel.
Only question remains is how you want to deal with mail, but there are workarounds for that.
...and sorry: Thats absolutely OK. I do not want strangers stopping by for 3 - 4 years to be able to influence the politics of my country? Thats totaly understandable?
I would never to ask to vote at a remote place where I do not live permanently, yet where I even not a citizen?
Somebody who spends 3-4 years in a place has an immense interest in how it's governed. Their view is 100% as valid as yours, and they should have equal voice, if we are going to judge people based on how long they live somewhere.
I live in a college town. Why shouldn't student voices be represented, when they are a huge chunk of our community?
Maybe I'm too US focused, and have been accused of that a lot recently, but your views are fundamentally at odds with basic democracy as I see it as a US citizen.
There's a massive difference between "will be in a place for 3-4 years maximum, then leaving" vs "has been in a place for 3-4 years but is planning on staying permanently." In the former case their interests are going to be short-term and might not align with long-term residences. Per your example, university students would vote against allocating funds toward schools or playgrounds, because they know they're not going to be raising a family there. Or more globally, you have the population of "digital nomads" who are working in Vietnam/Thailand for a few years before they come back to the US.
It's pretty debatable if these temporary residents should have the same voting rights as permanent residents, since their interests are going to be at odds with long-term residents. I would not be happy if schools got defunded because university students who are only going to be there for a few years wanted to lower alcohol taxes.
Permanent residency/citizenship being a prerequisite for voting is used as a (very imperfect) screening for this.
A city isn't just for the long-term residents. It must serve short term residents too. Those interests must be represented.
In the US, people get to vote where they live. We used to require silly things like owning land or being male or being white, but that was a really bad idea.
It is not debatable at all if short term residents should had the same voting rights as long term residents. It is very settled constitutional law in the US, and a completely radical idea to suggest changing a principle that has been fundamental for the period of time when the US has been a strong country.
> Per your example, university students would vote against allocating funds toward schools or playgrounds, because they know they're not going to be raising a family there
I think you have very bad intuitions here. In my college town, long term residents get upset that college students vote in favor of school funding, because the long term residents have kids that have already graduated and they don't want to pay for it anymore.
Shorter term residents have significant disadvantages in local politics, as local politics is largely a function of long term relationships and getting the word out on obscure elections where there's almost zero coverage of candidates, and for positions where few know what they do. Depriving short term residents of even using a vote is a huge perversion to the idea of democracy in the US.
> It is not debatable at all if short term residents should had the same voting rights as long term residents. It is very settled constitutional law in the US, and a completely radical idea to suggest changing a principle that has been fundamental for the period of time when the US has been a strong country.
Sorry what? Only US Citizens are legally allowed to vote in federal and state elections. This explicitly excludes a vast swarth of short-term residents who are there on school visas, work visas, or permanent residents who haven't gotten citizenship yet.
Because people do not vote "for local interests" but for "the interests they are carrying with them according to their believes", which are usually not on par with the interestes of the long-term-resident local community.
So what? Why does that matter on being able to vote? Shouldn't people bring their values to voting, isn't that the entire point?
Should we deny long term residents the right to vote becuase they aren't voting in the interests of short term residents? I don't understand the principle here, unless you think that short term residents are not residents, or full people, or something.
That is OK but OP should not be complaining about people not being engaged with local politics if you are excluding a large part of the people living in the city from voting.
Are a large part of the people living in a city the kind of semi-transitory-but-also-there-for-years people you describe?
I'd wager that's a small proportion of almost every city. Most cities will have tourists who are visiting for a few days or weeks, and long term residents who have a permanent address there. The percentage of people living full time in hotels or airbnbs must be tiny. Perhaps in high cost of living cities there's more "hidden homeless" living on couches, but even then it's not going to be "a large part" of a city.
I don't have sources but for cities like Amsterdam I wouldn't be surprised if 5% of the population isn't registered with the municipality for various reasons. But have been living there for years. Plenty of people I know would sublet empty rooms of their social housing apartment, which is highly illegal but for some people the only way to find a place to stay. But you obviously can't register because then the person subletting would be kicked out.
Among those that are registered to vote locally, most don't. Regardless of whether or not people should or shouldn't be able to vote, many of those currently with the ability to do not.
No, I was not able to vote.