LA City Council Votes to Put Non-Citizen Voting on November Ballot

The 10-5 vote advances one of the most contentious charter amendments in Los Angeles history, giving legal immigrants a potential path to local voting rights — if voters agree, and if city officials can figure out how to make it work.

Los Angeles, already facing scrutiny over its management of homelessness, public safety, and a strained city budget, is now at the center of a national debate over one of the most fundamental questions in American democracy: who gets to vote?

The LA City Council voted 10-5 Thursday to place a non-citizen voting proposal on the November 3 ballot — part of a sweeping charter reform package that will ultimately be decided not by the council, but by Los Angeles voters themselves. If passed, the measure would open local city council and Los Angeles Unified School District elections to non-citizen residents with legal immigration status, a population city officials estimate at roughly 1.3 to 1.4 million people.

What Did the Council Actually Vote On?

This is where precision matters. The council did not grant non-citizens the right to vote. It voted to let Los Angeles residents decide whether to amend the city charter to allow the council to create such a program.

The measure, introduced by Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, would serve as a first step — a charter amendment enabling future legislation, not an immediate policy change. Final eligibility criteria, administrative mechanisms, and legal safeguards would all come later, if voters approve the concept in November.

Soto-Martínez framed the proposal in terms of civic equity. “I want this to be a way to show the world that Los Angeles is going the opposite direction of the federal government,” he told colleagues during the council debate. “While they are trying to take away people’s rights, we’re expanding it.”

Supporters argue that non-citizen residents who live, work, pay taxes, and raise families in Los Angeles deserve a voice in the decisions that govern them.

“People have spent many years here, and in many cases, decades, contributing to the city of Los Angeles,” Soto-Martínez said. “This is about local representation and local democracy.”

Who Would Qualify?

Eligibility, under the current framework, would be restricted to immigrants with some form of legal status. That includes:

• Recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)
• Holders of Temporary Protected Status (TPS)
• Lawful permanent residents (green card holders)
• Individuals with active asylum cases

Undocumented immigrants would not qualify under the proposal as currently designed. That distinction has been largely absent from social media commentary on the vote, but it carries significant legal and political weight.

What Are the Unanswered Questions?

The five dissenting council members did not all oppose the idea outright — several raised substantive concerns about whether the city has thought through the mechanics.

Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, who expressed conceptual support but voted no, identified a core logistical problem: “We actually find ourselves in a difficult situation because we’re either going to have to finance our own separate type of ballot.”

Los Angeles currently relies on Los Angeles County to administer its elections. A parallel non-citizen voter roll would require the city to either build its own election infrastructure or negotiate a complex arrangement with county officials — at considerable expense to taxpayers.

Councilman John Lee raised concerns about the integrity implications. “Election laws are different from ordinary policy decisions,” he said. “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 the proposal could invite politically-motivated violations or, at minimum, perceptions of abuse that erode confidence in the city’s broader electoral system.

Is This Legal?

Federal law prohibits non-citizens from voting in federal elections — but it does not preempt municipalities from allowing participation in strictly local races. That creates a legal gray zone that has already produced flashpoints in other cities.

New York City passed a similar measure in 2022 that would have extended municipal voting rights to approximately 800,000 non-citizens. It never took effect. New York’s Court of Appeals struck it down in a 6-1 ruling, holding that the state constitution “draws a firm line restricting voting to citizens.”

California’s constitution does not contain that same explicit restriction, but legal scholars warn that challenges to any eventual Los Angeles ordinance are essentially guaranteed. If voters approve the November measure, the city would then have to enact implementing legislation — and that legislation would face immediate court scrutiny.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which opposes the measure, has pledged to work against its passage. Spokesperson Ira Mehlman argued that detaching voting rights from citizenship erodes a foundational democratic principle. “They’re rendering the whole concept of citizenship meaningless,” he said. “Anybody can simply show up and have an equal voice in how the country, or the city, or the state is run. Then what does it really mean to be a citizen of the United States?”

A National Trend — in Both Directions

Los Angeles is not acting in a vacuum. Several other jurisdictions have already implemented non-citizen voting in limited contexts. San Francisco approved non-citizen participation in school board elections in 2016; Oakland followed in 2022. The District of Columbia and municipalities in a handful of other states have similar programs.

But the national trend is cutting in both directions. In 2024, eight states approved constitutional amendments explicitly prohibiting non-citizen voting at the state and local level. Texas voters approved a similar measure in 2025. Alaska has a comparable initiative on the November 2026 ballot — the same election cycle in which Los Angeles will ask its own voters to weigh in.

The partisan lines are stark: in states that have put citizenship-voting amendments to a vote, Republican legislators supported them at a 99.7% average rate; Democratic support varied widely by state, averaging 43.1%.

Key Questions

Will voters actually approve it? Los Angeles is a heavily Democratic city, but the measure faces genuine public skepticism over cost, implementation, and legality — including from council members who broadly support the concept.

How would the city manage a separate voter registry? Without county cooperation, LA would face a significant administrative and financial burden building its own election infrastructure for a non-citizen voter pool.

What happens in court? Even if November voters approve the charter amendment, any resulting ordinance will almost certainly face legal challenges — and the New York precedent shows those challenges can succeed.

How does this interact with the California voter ID initiative? Also on the November 2026 ballot is a statewide initiative that would require government-issued ID for in-person voting and ID verification for mail-in ballots. The simultaneous push to expand access and tighten verification requirements on the same ballot creates a complicated electoral environment for Los Angeles.

The Broader Context

The vote comes as Los Angeles faces an extraordinary convergence of civic crises — ongoing homelessness, a city budget under strain, and a mayoral administration still recovering its footing after the 2025 wildfire response. Critics of the measure argue the city has no business expanding its political infrastructure when basic governance remains under pressure.

Supporters counter that non-citizen residents are among those most directly affected by city services, housing policy, and school funding decisions — and that taxation without any representation is a principle that should discomfort Americans across the political spectrum.

What neither side disputes is that the decision now belongs to Los Angeles voters, not the council. On November 3, the city will have to answer a question that the rest of the country is also, in its own way, beginning to grapple with.