That’s how John Fund described the push for non-citizen voting at a panel I organized this week; Michael Barone spoke as well. (Here’s the paper we released, the panel transcript, and a news story.) To dispel the notion that non-citizen voting is so outlandish that it’s not worth discussing (like this blogger’s complaint), Fund said this:

But to make the point that this is a live decision, San Francisco Board of Supervisors supported this measure [an unsuccessful 2004 measure to allow non-citizen voting in local elections], put it on the ballot. Other cities have come close to putting this on the ballot and supporting it. This will become a live issue when some large city other than San Francisco puts it on the ballot. And it’s inevitable because just as Mr. Gonzalez [a San Francisco official] has said that given the changing composition of the city of San Francisco and more and more legal immigrants entering the city, he believes it would pass today because the rejection of it was not overwhelming.