OC City could set a trend

In a vote that will be closely watched across the country, Santa Ana, the county seat of Orange County, could become the first city in California to allow non-U.S. citizens to vote in local elections.

Voters in the city of about 310,000 residents will choose Measure DD when they cast their ballots on Nov. 5.

In California, non-U.S. citizens are currently allowed to vote in school board elections in San Francisco. Oakland has passed a similar measure but has not yet put it into practice. This includes permanent residents, work visa holders, refugees and undocumented immigrants. Allowing non-citizens to vote actually has a long history in the US (more on that soon).

However, Santa Ana’s move comes at a time when Republicans have made opposing non-citizens voting one of their platforms for the November election. In Congress, conservatives have advocated for the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act to require proof of citizenship to register to vote and even tie it to the government spending package. And just a short distance away, in Huntington Beach, voters earlier this year passed a voter ID measure that Gov. Gavin Newsom has since blocked.

The push to allow non-citizens to vote in Santa Ana is the exact opposite. If Measure DD passes, political science experts told LAist, they could envision a blueprint for other cities, depending on how they fare in the state practice impacts.

History of non-citizen voting in the country

Louis DeSipio, a professor of political science and Chicano/Latino studies at UC Irvine, said that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, about half of states allowed non-U.S. citizens to vote in state elections.

The states’ motivation, he said, was “to encourage immigrants to live in one state rather than another, and they felt that kind of encouragement to move to a state that gave non-natives the right to vote Citizens are allowed to participate in governance.”

From the 20th century onwards, this trend declined, according to DeSipio. The reformers called for elections to be taken out of the hands of politicians and placed in the hands of non-partisan bodies such as today’s electoral commissions.

Fernando Guerra, director of the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, said the “Red Scare” of the 1940s and 1950s contributed to the denial of voting to non-U.S. citizens, Senator Joseph McCarthy used fear tactics and intimidation to fight the spread of communism.

Yes, in some cases non-US citizens may be allowed to vote

While federal law expressly prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections, this ban does not extend to the local and state levels. A law passed in 1996, known as The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, establishes provisions allowing non-citizens to vote in non-federal elections if they are “authorized to do so pursuant to a state constitution, law or local ordinance.” are authorized to vote for another purpose”.

Although such provisions are still rare, they are currently being put into practice.

In addition to the measures in San Francisco and Oakland, three cities in Vermont allow non-U.S. citizens to vote. Non-US citizens can also vote in some Maryland cities (in Takoma Park, which is three decades old), as well in Washington DC, where a ballot measure was recently passed. These votes are limited to local elections and school board elections.

Although the right to vote was granted, Voter turnout and registration of non-citizens remains low.

The case for the opening vote in Santa Ana

Current registration data for Orange County shows about 132,000 of Santa Ana’s 310,000 residents are registered to vote in the upcoming election. According to census data, about 41% of Santa Ana residents were born outside the United States.

Laura Pantoja has lived in Santa Ana for 28 years. Panoja, who immigrated from Mexico and is not a U.S. citizen, said she believes if voters approve Measure DD, “it would be a model of a democratic system in which all people are heard.”

“When people listen to us, it gives us a sense of belonging and participation, which is very important in building a community,” Pantoja said.

Sarai Arpero, also a non-U.S. citizen, has lived in Santa Ana for more than 20 years. She said she has seen City Council representatives come and go in various positions of power during that time and things have not improved.

“It’s gotten a little bit worse in a lot of areas, health and safety,” she said.

If Measure DD passes, she said, it will create “balance and equilibrium” in local politics.

“We are not given a social security number to work or permission to work with dignity. But we get an identification number, the ITIN, to file taxes every year,” Arpero said.

The ability to vote, Arpero said, will allow her to have a say in housing, security and economic policies in the city. She said extending voting rights to non-citizens would mean elected officials would better represent communities instead of being pushed by people with the money to influence elections.

The Case Against Measure DD

Those who oppose the measure — including Mayor Valerie Amezcua — say the city would be forced to pay for costly changes to how the city conducts elections. Responsibility for conducting elections in the city currently lies with the Orange County Registrar of Voters. If the measure passes, the city would have to conduct its own elections, opponents say.

They say those additional costs would eat up money from first responders’ budgets as well as city services like pothole repairs.

There was concrete wording on the ballot measure in May challenged in court from critics who called it “unlawfully partisan” because it included references to “taxpayers and parents,” which critics said was an attempt to cast the measure in a more positive light. A judge agreed and ordered the language changed reformulated for voting measure.

James Lacy, who filed the lawsuit against the ballot measure in Santa Ana, had previously challenged non-U.S. citizen voting efforts in Oakland and San Francisco.

Lacy said on LAist’s AirTalk radio show that he doesn’t live in Santa Ana but is encouraging friends to vote against the measure because “when you separate voting from citizenship, you devalue citizenship and devalue the desirable quality” of citizenship and belonging.

What’s next?

UC Irvine’s DeSipio said if Santa Ana’s measure passes, it could lead to ballot measures in other Southern California cities, particularly those with large populations of long-term immigrants.

“Where immigrants are connected to the local community and have long been involved in the civic life of those communities, you will see greater interest in studying non-citizen voting,” he said.

Loyola Marymount’s Guerra said other cities would likely wait, noting they want to know how Santa Ana implements the measure. They will also keep a close eye on possible lawsuits against the measure.

Guerra said there are five key factors other cities will consider:

1. Is it the right thing?
2. Will it happen?
3. Will it survive a legal challenge?
4. How high will the realized costs be?
5. Would you like to do this in your jurisdiction?

Editor’s Note: Fernando Guerra is a life trustee of Southern California Public Radio, LAist’s parent company.

Associate producer Gillian Morán Pérez contributed to this report.