" a move that could increase the number of eligible voters in the city by as much as a third and dramatically alter the city's political landscape."

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Jen Stewart

Get real. If you're not a man you've got no business voting. Voting is a right for men. If women want to vote then they can apply and wait for that right.

Incidentally, Boston let women vote in municipal elections well before they were allowed to vote in federal elections. While people may disagree about letting legal immigrants vote, one shouldn't confuse federal voting requirements with local voting requirements. Rights are for whoever we as a people decide to grant them to and if your only response to the proposal is "voting is a right for citizens" you're going to have to come up for a better argument than that, given how many Constitutional protections legal immigrants already enjoy. I do recall some sentiment around Boston at one time that "taxation without representation is tyranny". Who is representing the taxpaying legal immigrant?

Until the 1920s, non-citizen legal immigrants could vote in local elections in 40 states. Boston is actually behind many other areas in permitting local people affected by local decisions to participate in local affairs http://www.immigrantvoting.org/statescurrent/USoverview.html
http://www.immigrantvoting.org/statescurrent/statelist.html

That said, one could argue that people that think immigrant voting is a bad idea should be consigned to live in places like Everett, which seems to be following Chelsea down the hole of corruption and profiteering by public officials. Chelsea collapsed years ago and went into state receivership for the same sort of reasons Everett is hideously corrupt: local officials regularly sell out the tax dollars and the health and safety of people who cannot vote for their own personal gain.

(and yes, immigrants DO PAY TAXES, either through their rents or through property ownership and through payroll taxes and sales taxes and excise taxes just like everybody else).

In most places, only American citizens can vote in the community where they live. Arroyo's proposal would extend that right to immigrants who say they intend to become citizens.

If any immigrant could immediately become a citizen by just walking into an office, paying a fee, and taking an exam, I'd agree with you.

But in fact, this process takes years, if the immigrant is eligible for it at all. Meanwhile, she's paying taxes and sending her kids to local schools. Giving her a voice and a vote strengthens the democratic process and helps integrate her into the community.