A few American Samoans are being arrested in Alaska for voting in local elections, even though they are American nationals, and permanently reside in Alaska in the very place where they are voting. A news account describes what happened to an American Samoan in Whittier, Alaska, where a significant share of residents are American Samoans. Tupe Smith voted in local elections and was elected to the local school board after years of volunteering at her kids’ school. Then she was arrested because she is an American Samoan:
Unbeknownst to Smith at the time, she had no right to vote in Whittier elections, much less run for office. Though she was born in a U.S. territory, and has a U.S. passport and Social Security number, she is not a U.S. citizen.
American Samoa is the only U.S. state or territory where people are born without automatic citizenship, and without the right to vote in state, federal, and most local elections anywhere outside of American Samoa.
Unlike people born in the other U.S. territories of Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoans are classified simply as “U.S. nationals”—a sort of limbo state that acknowledges they are American by birth, but still denied the full rights and privileges of citizenship.
Even though they pay taxes, owe “allegiance” by law to the United States, and can join or be drafted into the military—American Samoans have long served in and died for the U.S. military at exceptionally high rates—non-citizen American Samoan nationals cannot register to vote, run for office, serve on juries, or hold any job requiring citizenship. Unless they can claim citizenship through a parent or grandparent, American Samoan nationals must apply for citizenship as though they were immigrants. That process can be costly, confusing, and long.
As non-citizen nationals, they exist in a formal underclass of democracy that precludes them from, for one, running for a local school board.
An Alaska state trooper told Smith that “There’s an arrest warrant out for you,” even though he conceded it was not as if she had “murdered someone or anything like that.”
Smith told him she had no idea she’d done anything wrong. The limits on American Samoans’ rights are “not well understood by most people—including many American Samoans themselves, and even most Alaska officials.” “I know that I cannot vote for the president,” Smith said when arrested. “I didn’t know that I can’t vote for anything else.”
In addition to Smith being arrested, her husband and nine of his relatives received court summonses accusing them of felony illegal voting, because they are American nationals, not American citizens.
If American Samoans move to the mainland United States, they should be able to vote in local elections in the place they permanently reside in, just the way Puerto Ricans can vote in the cities and towns in the mainland United States that they move to from Puerto Rico.
