[zdragnar]

I don't want people living in San Francisco voting on my small Midwestern town's policies or elections just because they might hypothetically choose to live here one day.

Likewise, I don't want non-Americans living in Europe or elsewhere voting in state or federal elections because they might someday choose to become American citizens.

In both cases, those people might vote then end up never following through on their half of the commitment.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

You're missing the point. It's not about whether people who do not live in X should be able to vote in X. I think most people would agree that they definitely should not.

It's about whether the people currently living in X should be able to arrange things so that certain other groups of people will be impeded from living in X in the future.

There's clearly room for some debate there: most people would agree that nations can set their own standards for immigration and that these may exclude large classes of people.

However, if a town explicitly said "we do not want anyone who earns less than 400% of median household income to move here", I think that most people would find that at least a little troubling.

There really are not any mechanisms that would allow a US municipality to say that explicitly. However, things like zoning laws can be used to go fairly far in this direction in a more implicit way.

I think that's wrong.