Non-citizen voting was already in full swing in L.A. Then fears of Trump's backsliding disrupted the program

It was a sad time for much of Southern California, as federal immigration agents rounded up undocumented workers from car washes, garment factories and Home Depot parking lots.

Angelica Salas, who heads one of Los Angeles' immigrant rights groups, met last summer with City Council Member Hugo Soto-Martínez — who is also the son of Mexican immigrants — as they responded. The two have been circling back to one issue: the lack of political power exercised by non-residents.

“A lot of this is happening because immigrants don't have the right to vote,” said Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights.

Those discussions helped fuel Soto-Martínez's decision in late April to push a ballot proposal aimed at giving non-citizens the right to vote in city and school district elections. The proposal quickly gained momentum, with two-thirds of the council voting in mid-June to place the measure on the November 3 ballot.

But the efforts failed on Tuesday, the council postponed the study and sent the proposal to the committee for further study. Before the vote, Soto-Martínez admitted that he had not done enough outreach, especially to the city's Black community leaders.

At the time, critics accused the council of failing to do its homework, leaving voters blank on questions such as whether undocumented immigrants would be paid for by business expansion. Others worry that the proposal will endanger the very people it was designed to help, making them the new target of the Trump administration.

Even community leaders who have worked on human rights issues have been urging the council to slow down.

Mobilizing Preachers and Communities, a national nonprofit that represents pastors and civil rights lawyers, called for a delay, citing concerns about President Trump. Pastor KW Tulloss, who is the Director of this group in the western region, said that he also hears the concerns of Black residents and religious leaders about the possibility of weakening the representation of Black people in voting.

That would reduce the number of Black elected officials in Los Angeles, he said.

“That's a big concern for our community,” Tulloss said. “And we won't be afraid to have that conversation.”

In LA, Black residents make up about 8% of registered voters, according to the Sacramento-based firm Political Data, Inc. That number has been steadily declining over the past few decades. An influx of non-seated voters — Latinos, Asians and others — could cause it to shrink even more.

By the end of the year, the 15-member LA City Council will have two black representatives, down from three, all from districts based in South LA. Two Latinos ran in this year's election to replace Councilor Curren Price, who is black and retired after serving three terms.

The county's five-member Board of Supervisors has one Black member. Voters approved adding four more members, which some feared would leave the board with one Black member out of nine.

Tulloss said his organization supports the creation of a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in the city. At the same time, he was concerned that Soto-Martínez's proposal in the short term could alienate Black citizens from blacks, who share the same struggle on many issues.

“At the end of the day, we don't want any kind of agreement that will create division in the community,” he said.

Soto-Martínez, who represents the Echo Park-to-Hollywood district, said in an interview Wednesday that non-resident voting was part of his platform when he first ran for City Council in 2022. He said he started thinking about the issue seriously a decade ago, when San Francisco voters passed a measure allowing non-resident parents to vote in school board elections.

Since its founding, the United States has repeatedly defined the right to vote, including women, black people and other groups, he said.

“To me, it seemed very natural to raise it,” he said. “It's part of our history.”

The idea of ​​non-resident voting has been floated in LA for years. School board member Kelly Gonez urged her colleagues to start testing it in 2019. But the effort was shelved after the COVID-19 outbreak, which caused major disruptions in the Los Angeles Unified School District, said Michael Trujillo, Gonez's political strategist.

Last summer, as the Trump administration launched an immigration crackdown across Southern California, the city convened a 13-citizen commission to come up with proposals to rewrite the City Charter, LA's governing document.

The commission took a non-citizen poll in March, narrowly rejecting it. Several commissioners said they were concerned about unintended consequences, such as the Trump administration's treatment of newly registered voters, said Raymond Meza, who chaired the commission.

“I thought those concerns were not fully addressed,” Meza said, “so I changed my vote” and opposed the proposal.

A month later, as the deadline to put items on the Nov. 3 is fast approaching, Soto-Martínez presented a proposal calling for a two-step process to expand voting rights. First, voters will be asked to authorize the City Council to grant non-residents the right to vote.

The council will then review the details of the change before passing legislation to expand those voting rights.

Soto-Martínez said his proposal is based on a simple idea: Those who live in the city, raise their families there and pay taxes “deserve to have a say” in local decision-making. He did not give many details, saying that it will be fixed later.

Critics, and even some supporters, say Soto-Martínez made his move at the wrong time. Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez, who voted for the proposal in mid-June, expressed fear that the list of registered voters would be quickly seized by federal authorities.

Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said he opposes non-resident voting in city elections. He does it for LA Unified – but only for the parents of the children who attend those schools.

Villaraigosa, who led the city from 2005-13 and recently ran for governor, said now is not the right time to make even that change.

“With Trump going through every record he can find looking for undocumented people, I think it's the wrong time,” he said. “I think that these people will be exposing themselves in exile, and those with good intentions will be exposing themselves.”

Soto-Martínez cited arguments such as “fear of fear,” saying that undocumented immigrants are putting themselves at risk every day in their quest to create a better future for their families.

Salas, head of CHIRLA, emphasized that idea.

“At the end of the day, we are already victims,” ​​she said. “This won't make it worse. Don't tell me voting for this was to protect immigrants.”

Trump's threats aren't the only reason council members are hesitant.

Rodriguez, who expressed interest in the proposal, said city leaders have not yet decided how county election officials will cast the separate ballots for voters who will be barred from state and national contests. They had not yet received the cost of this program, he said.

Twenty-two local governments across the country have approved and implemented non-citizen voting, according to Megan Dias, author of “Immigrant Voting and the Movement for Inclusion in San Francisco,” a report examining the city's push to allow immigrants to vote in school board elections.

Dias said non-citizen voting supporters need to build a coalition — grassroots organizations, election officials, city attorneys — before taking the proposal to voters.

Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson said he hoped non-citizen voting would receive a more comprehensive review in the coming months, and a vote could be held in 2028. First, he said, the council will need to provide voters with specifics on how the changes will work.

Harris-Dawson said she's heard from people who want more time to understand the proposal, “to make sure it's done in a way that protects Black voting districts in particular.”

During discussions of the proposal, it was also unclear whether the change would apply to green card holders, recipients of Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals or other categories of non-citizens.

“If something goes to the polls, we need the details to be spelled out – like how much it will cost, how it will work, and what the boundaries are,” Harris-Dawson said. “All that needs to be explained.”