A Los Angeles City Council member wants voters to approve a charter amendment this November that would open the door for the council to let foreign nationals cast ballots in city elections, a move that mirrors a failed effort in New York City that the state's highest court struck down as unconstitutional.
Councilman Hugo Soto-Martinez, a Democrat, introduced the proposal, which would place a question on the November ballot asking Los Angeles voters whether the city charter should be amended to allow the council to "explore" extending voting rights to noncitizens. The measure would not grant those rights directly. Instead, it would remove a charter barrier so the council could take up the issue later.
Soto-Martinez framed the proposal in modest terms when speaking to local media.
"It just says, 'Should we amend the city charter to allow the city council to explore this in the future.'"
That framing deserves close scrutiny. The word "explore" does a lot of heavy lifting. Charter amendments are not casual conversation starters. They are structural changes to the legal foundation of city government. Once the barrier is gone, the council would need only a simple vote, not another trip to the ballot, to extend voting privileges to foreign nationals living in Los Angeles.
The mechanics of the proposal matter. Before the question can reach voters, the motion must first clear the council's rule committee, then win approval from the full city council. Only after both hurdles are cleared would it appear on the November ballot.
If voters approve the charter change, the council gains the authority to decide on its own whether noncitizens, including illegal immigrants, may vote in municipal races. No second referendum required. No additional public vote. The council would hold that power outright.
That structure is worth pausing on. Soto-Martinez describes it as merely opening a discussion. But the practical effect is to shift the decision away from voters and hand it to a council dominated by Democrats. The ballot question is the last time ordinary citizens of Los Angeles would have a direct say.
As we have previously reported, this same councilman has been building toward this proposal for some time, making the current push the culmination of a sustained effort rather than a spontaneous idea.
Los Angeles is not the first major city where Democrats have attempted to extend the franchise to noncitizens. Democrats on the New York City Council pursued a similar plan, passing a measure to allow foreign nationals to vote in municipal elections.
That effort did not survive legal challenge. The State of New York Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, ruled last year that the New York City plan was unconstitutional. The court's language was direct, stating that the ruling "makes clear what our case law has long held: Article II, section 1 restricts voting to citizens."
The New York precedent is instructive. It did not merely fail on a technicality. The court identified a bedrock constitutional principle: voting is a right of citizens, not of residents generally. The ruling drew a bright line that Los Angeles Democrats now appear eager to test on the opposite coast.
Whether California's state constitution contains a comparable restriction is an open question the Step 1 materials do not resolve. But the New York experience suggests that any city-level effort to extend voting rights to noncitizens will face serious legal headwinds.
The L.A. proposal does not exist in isolation. Across the country, questions about who is eligible to vote, and how rigorously that eligibility is enforced, continue to surface.
In New Jersey, four noncitizens recently faced federal charges for illegally voting in elections, a reminder that the existing system already struggles to prevent ineligible ballots from being cast.
Minnesota dealt with a similar case. A noncitizen faced felony charges after casting a ballot in the 2024 election, raising pointed questions about whether safeguards are keeping pace with the scale of the problem.
These cases involve people who voted illegally under current law. The Los Angeles proposal would skip the enforcement question entirely and simply make noncitizen voting legal at the city level, at least if the council chooses to act after a charter amendment passes.
Several important details remain unclear. The exact text of the motion has not been made public in the available reporting. It is not known whether the proposal distinguishes between legal permanent residents and illegal immigrants, or whether it would extend eligibility to any foreign national residing in the city regardless of immigration status.
No co-sponsors have been identified. No vote count from the rule committee or full council has been reported. And the specific November election year, whether 2025, 2026, or later, is not stated in the available materials.
Those gaps matter. Voters deserve to know precisely who would become eligible and under what conditions before they are asked to amend their city charter. A vague ballot question paired with broad council discretion is a recipe for outcomes most residents never anticipated when they marked "yes."
Election integrity concerns extend well beyond noncitizen voting proposals. In North Carolina, for instance, officials recently flagged roughly 34,000 deceased names still on voter rolls, a sign that basic maintenance of election systems remains a persistent weakness nationwide.
The political logic behind the L.A. proposal is not hard to trace. Los Angeles is home to one of the largest foreign-born populations in the country. Extending voting rights to noncitizens in city elections would expand the electorate in ways that overwhelmingly favor the party already in control of city government.
Soto-Martinez and his allies may frame this as inclusion. But the practical effect is to dilute the voting power of American citizens, the people who bear the obligations of citizenship, from jury duty to tax liability to military service, by adding voters who do not share those obligations.
That is not a minor procedural adjustment. It is a fundamental redefinition of who gets to decide how a major American city is governed.
Democrats elsewhere have pursued parallel strategies to reshape electoral rules in their favor. Virginia recently signed the national popular vote compact into law, moving closer to bypassing the Electoral College, another structural change designed to tilt outcomes toward one party's advantage.
The Los Angeles proposal still faces procedural hurdles. The rule committee and full council must both approve it before it reaches the ballot. Those votes will reveal whether the broader council shares Soto-Martinez's appetite for this fight, or whether some members recognize the political and legal risks.
New York's experience offers a clear warning. The state's highest court did not hedge. It said voting belongs to citizens. Period. Los Angeles Democrats can dress up their proposal in the language of exploration and future discussion, but the destination is unmistakable.
If citizenship means anything, it means the right to choose your own government is not handed out to people who have not earned it.
