Last week, the Los Angeles City Council voted to place a charter amendment on the November 3 ballot to facilitate giving noncitizens a vote in city elections.
“The measure, introduced by Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, will give immigrants who live, work, pay taxes and raise families in Los Angeles a voice in decisions that directly affect their lives,” The New York Post reported.
Of course, “immigrants” who have become United States citizens already have the vote; this effort is about giving voting rights to immigrants who have not become citizens.
“I believe it’s a simple principle that should guide us: If you live in the city, contribute to the city, raise your family in the city and are impacted by the decisions made in the city, you deserve to have a voice in the city,” Soto-Martínez said.
First, citizen or not, the First Amendment gives everyone a voice.
Just not necessarily a vote.
Second, these suggested criteria by which non-citizens will gain the vote are simply made-up talking points, not part of the law at all. You don’t have to “work” to be eligible to vote. Nor must one bear children and rear them in LA to qualify. Lastly, no, you don’t have to be a net taxpayer, either.*
“The amendment would modify the city charter so that the council can later adopt an ordinance authorizing eligible noncitizens to vote in municipal contests,” explained Daily49er.com. Who would be “eligible”? Those in the country illegally, as in San Francisco and Oakland?
Worst of all, voters could know the answers to those questions only after they decide to give the city council the power to expand the electorate — to whatever part of LA’s over 680,000 noncitizens it settles upon.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Plus, as standards go, “impacted by the decisions made in the city” is true for anyone who ever drives through Los Angeles. Will license plate readers be used to track down those motorists traveling through to send them mail-in ballots instead of photo enforced speeding tickets?
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2 replies on “Who & What in LA?”
Properly, what the City of Los Angeles is empowered to do should be so very limited that those who drive through it or live in it should not much care whether they can vote in its elections.
And now perhaps the time has again come to note that city and county governments are creatures of the constituent states, and not the other way around, so that the constituent states are not federations of cities nor even of counties, nor the counties federations of vilages and towns and cities, and the idea that states or counties ought to behave as federations is like a rabbit pulled from a hat — not at all natural.
I doubt that the LA measure would let noncitizens OF LA vote.
More likely, it would just let citizens of LA vote in LA elections whether they’re citizens of a different polity (the US) or not.
Just like citizens of the US get to vote in US elections whether they’re citizens of France, Malawi, South Korea — or, for that matter, LA — or not.