The Los Angeles City Council voted 10-5 this month to place a measure on the November ballot that would ask voters whether “noncitizen residents” should be allowed to vote in city and local school board elections.
That sentence should stop every American in their tracks. If Democrats can sever voting from citizenship in the nation’s second-largest city, the precedent will embolden them to spread it beyond Tinseltown’s borders.
This ballot measure is remarkable not merely because of what it would do, but also because of what it reveals.
For more than a decade, progressives have dismissed conservative warnings about illegal aliens voting as nothing other than a baseless “conspiracy theory” –just an excuse to justify stricter election laws that would “disenfranchise” legal voters.
Yet here we are. California Democrats are no longer merely defending sanctuary-city policies or protesting federal enforcement of our immigration laws. They are now directly asking voters whether individuals who broke our laws to enter the country should be allowed to help choose the politicians who run local government and the school board members who shape the education of the next generation.
Supporters are, of course, dressing up the measure as a matter of fairness and representation.
Democratic Socialist L.A. City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez, who sponsored the proposal, told local media that “if you live in the city, contribute to the city, raise your family in the city, and are impacted by the decisions made in the city, you deserve to have a voice in the city.” That’s a neat slogan, but it’s also a complete misunderstanding of how citizenship allowed our American experiment in self-government to thrive for the past 250 years.
The fundamental architecture of American self-governance rests on the constitutional mandate that sovereign authority resides in the people. But “the people” are not an amorphous category defined by mere physical location. It is a distinct body of citizens bound by an exclusive allegiance to one another and to the rule of law.
Citizenship carries deep, demanding obligations to bear arms in the nation’s defense, serve on juries, pay the full freight of taxes, submit to the outcomes of democratic elections, and follow the law. In exchange for these shared burdens, the citizen is granted ultimate directional control over the government via the ballot box.
The L.A. ballot proposal tramples on this fragile arrangement by destroying the political covenant between the government and its citizens. Instead, it follows the socialist tradition of reducing communities to economic zones of administrative management and implying that borders and sovereignty are totally irrelevant.
Under this philosophy of government, why would an aspiring immigrant endure the long and honorable process of naturalization when the local political apparatus will hand over the ultimate leverage of civic power for the mere price of occupying space?
Individuals will be incentivized to remain illegal aliens to take advantage of municipal perks while avoiding the full responsibility of citizenship. This ballot proposal treats citizenship not as the load-bearing wall of self-government, but as decorative trim that city hall can remove when politically convenient.
The scale of this proposal is staggering and dangerous. Demographic data indicates that roughly 1.3 million “noncitizens” reside within Los Angeles, comprising nearly 36 percent of the city’s total population. Adding such a voting bloc will fundamentally alter the political identity of the city.
The L.A. City Council is effectively importing a new electorate to insulate themselves from the failure of their leadership.
Even current Democrat voters should be outraged at this naked power grab. Existing Angelenos already struggle to navigate the city’s rampant homelessness and illicit drug crises, deteriorating infrastructure, and persistent public safety concerns like the recent wildfires that tore through the city. Now, they are being asked to agree to the erosion of their own electoral leverage.
It’s an act of ultimate irony for these progressive leaders to ask the consent of the governed to dilute their own voter influence. If L.A. citizens agree to the ballot measure, local politicians may never have to listen to their concerns ever again.
The practical implementation of noncitizens voting in local elections also invites potential administrative mayhem for federal elections.
Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, one of the five members who voted against the measure, warned that L.A. will have to “finance our own separate type of ballot” due to federal law prohibiting noncitizen voting if federal races are also on the ballot. This would require a bifurcated ballot system.
Beyond the logistical and financial nightmare surrounding its implementation, how will election officials accurately verify the identity of individuals who are here illegally without opening the floodgates to systemic voter fraud? Once they are registered on local voter rolls, what measures will ensure illegal immigrants do not receive federal ballots due to inevitable bureaucratic commingling?
Given that L.A. Democrats have already proven that they have so little regard for the sacredness of U.S. citizenship, no one can seriously trust that they won’t allow illegal aliens to vote in state and federal elections as well. This is a significant problem that most L.A. liberals appear suspiciously unconcerned about.
This is exactly why President Trump is right about the urgent need to protect the sanctity of citizenship and voting. As California Democrats seek to separate voting from citizenship, GOP efforts to ensure that American elections are decided by American citizens have become more important than ever before.
The SAVE America Act, currently stalled in the U.S. Senate, is vital legislation designed to require documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration in federal elections, regardless of whether L.A. muddles this process with their local elections. While critics argue this bill is redundant because federal noncitizen voting is already illegal, L.A. has demonstrated exactly why Trump’s broader push for citizenship verification is essential for the preservation of free and fair elections.
It is tempting for observers outside of California to dismiss the Los Angeles vote as another isolated episode of West Coast progressive overreach. But that would be a fatal mistake. Municipal enfranchisement is part of the Democrat Party’s coordinated national strategy to normalize noncitizen voting across the United States, as my colleague David Catron expertly articulated in a recent column for AMAC Newsline.
This November, Angelenos will decide whether their city remains a self-governing community of sovereign people or degenerates into Democrats’ dream of a post-civic administrative zone where citizenship is just another devalued currency.
W.J. Lee has served in the White House, NASA, on multiple campaigns, and in nearly all levels of government.
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