The Los Angeles City Council voted 10, 5 on Wednesday to place a measure on the November 3 ballot that would allow noncitizens to vote in city and school board elections, a move that would make Los Angeles the largest municipality in the country to open its local ballot box to people who are not American citizens.
The proposal, introduced by Councilman Hugo Soto-Martinez, was approved as part of a package of proposed charter changes. If voters approve it in November, the city would gain the authority to build a noncitizen voting program, though no policy would take effect until a future ordinance is adopted by the council and signed by the mayor, Just The News reported.
Five council members, Monica Rodriguez, Bob Blumenfield, John Lee, Tim McOsker, and Adrin Nazarian, voted against the measure. Rodriguez raised questions about cost and logistics, noting that the city relies on Los Angeles County to administer its elections. She reportedly supported the concept but declined to vote in favor, citing concerns about making what she considered false promises to constituents.
Soto-Martinez, who Newsmax noted is backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, framed the proposal as a matter of inclusion. He pointed to San Francisco as an example of a jurisdiction that already permits noncitizen voting and said the eligible population would include DACA recipients, Temporary Protected Status holders, and legal permanent residents.
ABC7 Los Angeles reported his remarks to the council:
"This issue to me is really about fairness and representation. It just does not make sense to me that someone who moves to Los Angeles for a temporary job has more of a voice than a parent who has been here for decades, raising their children through our public schools."
That framing deserves scrutiny. The "someone who moves to Los Angeles for a temporary job" in Soto-Martinez's comparison is, by definition, a U.S. citizen, someone who has either been born into or earned the obligations and privileges of citizenship. The parent he describes may have lived in the city for years, but the distinction between citizen and noncitizen is not an accident of paperwork. It is the legal foundation of self-governance.
Councilman John Lee, who voted no, made that point directly:
"Election laws are different from ordinary policy decisions. They establish rules under which elected officials are chosen and held accountable, and because of that, changes to voting eligibility should be approached with the utmost public trust and legitimacy."
Lee also warned that the measure could empower politically motivated violations or abuse, or at least create the perception of such behavior. In a city where noncitizen voter roll problems have already surfaced in other states, that concern is not theoretical.
The backlash arrived fast. Fox News reported that Republican senators and conservative commentators condemned the vote. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah wrote that "the LA City Council wants to give local voting rights to illegals for the explicit purpose of empowering them against ICE and immigration enforcement." Elon Musk posted on X: "They have imported voters to win."
Roxanne Hoge, chair of the LA County Republican Party, offered a pointed response rooted in personal experience. "As a naturalized American citizen, the right to vote in this country's elections is incredibly important to me," she said. "It is a privilege that is properly reserved for people who are either born here or love the U.S.A. enough to make a commitment to follow its laws."
Hoge also called the proposal "a logistical nightmare that would erode trust in our already-tainted system in California." That word, trust, keeps surfacing in the opposition's arguments, and for good reason. At a time when the federal government has moved to give states access to databases for voter citizenship verification, Los Angeles is moving in exactly the opposite direction.
Chief Legislative Analyst Sharon Tso told council members the proposal was written in a "permissible" manner and said voter approval would give the city time to create a noncitizen voting program and answer what she called vital questions from elected officials. But the council voted to send the measure to voters without answering most of those questions first.
No cost estimate has been made public. No mechanism for verifying noncitizen eligibility has been described. The city does not run its own elections, Los Angeles County does, and no agreement with the county on administering a separate noncitizen voter track has been announced.
The proposal also raises a practical danger that one of Soto-Martinez's own opponents flagged. Dylan Kendall, who is running against the councilman, told Newsmax: "What he's proposing now sounds less like protecting our community and more like asking people to sign onto a public list that exposes undocumented neighbors to greater danger." That warning takes on added weight given that DHS Secretary Mullin has not ruled out ICE presence at polling places.
Ira Mehlman, a spokesperson for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, put it simply: "That is a privilege and a right that is reserved for citizens."
Los Angeles is not the first California city to try this. Santa Ana's city council also voted 10, 5 to place a noncitizen voting measure, Measure DD, before voters. That proposal would have made roughly 70,000 noncitizen residents eligible to vote in local elections, including permanent residents, visa holders, refugees, and illegal immigrants. A Santa Ana councilmember, Benjamin Vazquez, argued that noncitizen residents contribute an estimated $117 million in state and local taxes annually and called the arrangement "taxation without representation," AP News reported.
The taxation argument has rhetorical appeal, but it proves too much. Tourists pay sales tax. Foreign corporations pay property tax. Tax liability has never been the constitutional basis for the franchise. Citizenship is.
James Lacy, an attorney and president of the U.S. Justice Foundation, made that distinction in response to the Santa Ana effort: "Citizenship is to be valued, and the crown jewel of citizenship is the right to vote."
If Los Angeles voters approve the measure, the city would become the largest in the nation to authorize noncitizen voting in local races, covering elections for mayor, City Council, and the Board of Education. The signal that sends is not subtle. It tells every legal immigrant who spent years navigating the naturalization process that the civic reward they earned can be handed out for free. And it tells every citizen that the meaning of their vote just got diluted.
Meanwhile, at the federal level, efforts to shore up election integrity keep running into resistance. Four Senate Republicans recently sided with Democrats to defeat voter ID legislation, and the broader push to attach the SAVE America Act to must-pass bills has faced its own obstacles. The result is a widening gap: Washington stalls on verification while blue cities race to expand who gets a ballot.
The measure now goes before Los Angeles voters on November 3. Without their approval, the city cannot pursue a noncitizen voting program. If it passes, the council would still need to draft and adopt an implementing ordinance, and the mayor would need to sign it.
That means voters have the final say. The question is whether they understand what they are being asked to approve, and whether a city that cannot fill its potholes or keep its streets safe has any business redesigning the electorate.
Citizenship used to mean something in American elections. In Los Angeles, the council just voted to ask whether it still does.
