Los Angeles’ controversial push to let non-U.S. citizens vote in city elections will not appear on ballots in November after the City Council unanimously concluded the proposal wasn’t ready to be actioned.
The City Council unanimously slammed the brakes Tuesday, voting 14-0 to yank two charter amendments back to committee just 13 days after advancing them.
Mounting legal, privacy and election administration concerns ultimately doomed any chance of the measures making the Nov. 3 ballot.
The proposals would have changed the Los Angeles City Charter, the city’s governing rulebook, to give future City Councils the power to expand voting eligibility in city and Los Angeles Unified School District elections.
A new report from the City Attorney’s Office raised fresh concerns by noting the charter amendments would leave many of the biggest decisions to future City Councils.
The report also questioned whether one provision limiting when future councils could amend those ordinances could even be legally enforced, raising the prospect that future politicians could rewrite major election rules by ordinance rather than through another vote of the people.
Councilman John Lee, the only Independent on council, urged colleagues to pull the measure saying not enough homework had been done.
“We have not meaningfully examined the legal, fiscal, administrative, or privacy implications of this proposal,” Lee said.
Lee pointed to San Francisco, the lone California city that currently allows limited noncitizen voting, noting the city’s own voter registration materials warn applicants that personal information may be obtained by federal immigration authorities and advise prospective voters to consult an immigration attorney before registering.
He also argued that leaving major election rules, including voter eligibility, separate ballots and vote-counting procedures, for future councils to decide would erode public trust.
Councilwoman Traci Park, who voted to advance the proposal earlier this month so she could review the final ballot language, said the City Attorney’s draft left her with more questions than answers.
“My concern here is that if this goes to the ballot, the voters won’t really know what they’re voting for, because we don’t really know, either,” Park said.
She questioned how Los Angeles would protect immigrants’ personal information from federal immigration enforcement, whether Los Angeles County could even administer a separate election system and why county election officials had not been consulted.
“We haven’t even talked to L.A. County about whether they can do this,” Park said. “Nor do we have any legal advice from our own attorneys about how a system would be administered.”
Park also pointed to cities that have already wrestled with noncitizen voting, noting San Francisco spent years crafting a narrowly tailored program before voters approved it.
She also pointed to failed or troubled efforts in other cities.
Park said a similar proposal in Santa Ana collapsed over legal and implementation concerns.
She also noted that Oakland spent years building an administrative framework after voters approved its measure, while Washington, D.C., underwent extensive legal and financial reviews before its noncitizen voting system became tied up in litigation.
Councilman Hugo Soto-Martínez, who authored the proposal, defended the effort and rejected what he called fear-based arguments surrounding immigrant communities.
He said more than one million undocumented immigrants across the region live, work, pay taxes and raise families despite the daily fear of deportation, and said expanding voting rights remains “the right thing to do.”
Still, Soto-Martínez acknowledged more work was needed after concerns surfaced from several community groups, including members of Los Angeles’ Black community.
“I don’t want this to be something that gets pushed through,” he said. “I want this to pass … but when that happens, I want that to be a celebration.”
The proposals now head back to the Rules, Elections and Intergovernmental Relations Committee for further review before they can be considered again for a future ballot.