A constitutional referendum, held in February 2012, proposed amendments to the constitution of Latvia to make Russian the second state language of Latvia, but 821,722 (75%) of the voters voted against and 273,347 (25%) for. There has been criticism that about 290,000 of the 557,119 (2011) ethnic Russians in Latvia are non-citizens and do not have the right to vote, but even if it were assumed that all of them had voted for the amendments proposed, they would not have passed anyway.