California Dems Keep Their Distance From La Noncitizen Voting Proposal

Even in deep-blue Los Angeles, many Democrats are keeping their distance from a proposal to allow noncitizens to vote in city and school board elections — the latest sign of how fraught voting rights and immigration have become in the Trump era.

The Los Angeles City Council is set to vote on a charter amendment that would lay the groundwork for the council to consider creating such a program. The measure would require Mayor Karen Bass’ approval before going to voters in November.

Already, the proposal has been met with cautious responses from prominent California Democrats, including Bass and her mayoral rival Nithya Raman, while critics have warned it could provoke the Trump administration, expose immigrants to greater deportation risk and go too far beyond some California cities’ more restrained noncitizen voting measures.

Those concerns are heightened amid a mayoral race already unfolding under intense federal scrutiny. Trump has directed federal prosecutors to investigate election fraud claims in the California governor’s race and alleged, without evidence, that the state “screw[ed]” Republican Spencer Pratt in Los Angeles’ mayoral primary — the latest federal offensive against a city still reeling from widespread immigration raids and last year’s National Guard deployment.

“Right now isn’t the best time for all of that,” former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully for governor, told Playbook.

Villaraigosa said he supports allowing noncitizen parents to vote in school board elections, but worries the current political climate would discourage many people from participating because of ongoing immigration raids.

He’s not the only Democrat with apprehensions. Even after the City Council voted 10-5 to advance Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez’s measure as a part of its charter reforms, key Los Angeles power players have remained publicly noncommittal.

A spokesperson for Bass pointed Playbook to comments she made during the May 6 NBC LA mayoral debate, where candidates were asked a yes-or-no question about whether noncitizens should be allowed to vote in local elections.

Her answer? “It depends.”

“It doesn’t mean they’re undocumented,” Bass added. “They could have green cards, they could be here perfectly legally … We have to see what the councilman is proposing.”

Raman struck a similar note during the debate. Later, during a June council meeting, she said she was “very supportive of exploring expanding” the proposal. She echoed that sentiment in a statement to Playbook.

“Los Angeles is home to so many residents who pay taxes, raise families, and send their children to our schools — and I believe the principle that those residents deserve a voice in the decisions that shape their lives is worth exploring seriously,” Raman wrote.

Similar legislation already exists in San Francisco and Oakland, where in 2016 and 2022 voters approved programs for noncitizen parents to vote in school board elections. Yet Los Angeles would be the first city in California to ask voters to allow noncitizen voting in municipal elections.

The proposed measure contains few specifics — such as who would be newly eligible to vote — but would instead give the council the “discretion” to craft such an ordinance.

Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener, who is running to succeed Rep. Nancy Pelosi, stressed that he supports the policy in San Francisco but would not comment on the effort in Los Angeles.

“It was about parents who have kids in the schools having a voice in the school board, and so that was a compelling message for a lot of people,” Wiener said.

Another proponent of the San Francisco measure, California Democratic Party vice chair and former city supervisor David Campos, said it emerged from a fierce political moment in 2016, as voters sought to promote immigrants’ rights amid the incendiary immigration rhetoric of the first Trump campaign.

Since then, San Francisco politics have taken a centrist turn, with voters backing more moderate candidates prioritizing public safety and homelessness concerns, even while the city remains strongly Democratic. Campos said the federal atmosphere has also made the electorate less open to pro-immigrant measures.

“I'm not sure what would happen to something like this in today's San Francisco,” Campos said.

Not all Democrats are shying away from the proposal. Los Angeles Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez said Democrats must “be bold” in their decisions, maintaining that the measure represents “what the Democratic Party stands for.”

But even some liberal-minded Democrats are uneasy about how the Trump administration and Republicans could weaponize the Los Angeles measure. Republicans have already begun seizing on the initiative on X, amplified by Elon Musk and his America PAC.

Democratic political consultant Michael Trujillo argues the bigger risk is that the measure could create a registry of noncitizen voters, “an unprotected list that ICE can then grab and continue to wreak havoc amongst our community.”

He pointed to San Francisco's website on its noncitizen voting program, which warns noncitizens of the following: “Any information you provide to the Department of Elections, including your name and address, may be obtained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other agencies, organizations, and individuals.”

“Even San Francisco’s Board of Elections is saying, ‘Hey, we can’t protect you if you’re going to register to vote,’” Trujillo said. “This is not a protected list. Donald Trump and ICE can grab it whenever they want and mess with your lives. So, buyer beware.”

Oakland voters also authorized their City Council to allow noncitizen parent voting for school board elections, but the change has yet to be implemented, nearly four years later.

Soto-Martínez acknowledged the privacy concerns, saying that’s why the measure would not immediately establish the program but instead study how it could be implemented and what its scope should be.

He added that Los Angeles’ sanctuary city law protects residents’ citizenship data, and that many noncitizens — including visa holders and recipients of DACA and Temporary Protected Status — already share information with the federal government.

Democrats, Soto-Martínez said, have largely adopted one of two approaches in response to Trump’s presidency: lie low and wait out the administration or pursue their own vision and “stand up and fight.” He pointed to progressive upsets in last week’s New York primaries as evidence of which stance voters want.

“People are hungry for a vision, and so we want to give it to them here in the city of LA,” he said.

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