A Los Angeles City Council member has introduced a motion to put noncitizen voting on the November 2026 ballot. If voters approve the charter change, the City Council would gain the power to pass an ordinance letting noncitizens cast ballots in elections for city offices and Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education seats.

The motion was filed by Council Member Hugo Soto-Martinez. It still has to clear the council’s rules committee and then the full City Council before it can reach the ballot, but the destination is spelled out in plain language in the official filing.

The proposal has drawn immediate national attention and sharp criticism from conservatives who see it as an attempt to dilute the votes of American citizens in the country’s second-largest city.

The Los Angeles City Clerk published the official motion on April 29:

The motion states that Los Angeles is shaped by immigrant communities numbering more than 1.35 million residents and ties those communities to the city’s history, identity, culture, and accomplishments. It frames the proposal against the backdrop of federal immigration enforcement, citing raids, incarceration, family separation, lost income driven by fear, birthright-citizenship legal battles, travel bans, and taxpayer spending on immigration actions.

The motion then turns to charter reform. It acknowledges that the city does not have authority to fully halt federal immigration enforcement but argues it does have the ability, through charter changes, to enfranchise immigrant residents in city and LAUSD Board of Education elections. The requested action instructs the City Attorney to prepare ballot language for a November 2026 charter amendment that would grant the City Council power to introduce an ordinance authorizing noncitizens to vote in those elections.

Soto-Martinez has tried to soften the pitch by describing the first step as merely a charter question that would let the council “explore the issue later.” But the motion’s own language makes the end point clear: noncitizens voting alongside citizens in local elections.

Breitbart reported on the political context and the precedent Los Angeles would be following:

The proposal is still in its procedural stage, but the path forward is straightforward. Soto-Martinez’s motion must clear the council’s rules committee and then win approval from the full City Council before it can be placed on the November ballot. The framing from local media has leaned on the councilman’s description of the measure as an early, exploratory step, but the official filing already spells out the goal: giving foreign nationals, including illegal aliens, the right to vote in elections for city offices and school board seats.

The comparison to New York City looms large. Democrats there passed a similar measure opening local elections to noncitizens, but the New York Court of Appeals struck it down, ruling that the state constitution restricts the franchise to citizens. Los Angeles is now testing a similar political boundary through its own charter process, betting that California’s legal landscape will be more favorable than New York’s proved to be. The practical result would be a major fight over whether local government can expand voting power beyond American citizens while still claiming to protect the integrity of municipal elections.

Close to 40 percent of Los Angeles residents are foreign-born. That is the statistic proponents keep citing, and it is also the statistic that explains why the political incentive is so powerful. Enfranchising even a fraction of that population would reshape city politics overnight.

New York’s failed experiment should be a warning, not a blueprint. A court there already ruled that letting noncitizens vote violated the state constitution. Los Angeles Democrats are hoping California courts will see it differently, but the principle at stake is the same one voters across the country understand instinctively: citizenship means something, and the ballot box is where that meaning is supposed to be protected.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.
 

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