Add The California Post on Google Ten days ago, the LA City Council voted to start moving noncitizen voting toward the ballot.
This week, the council ran away from it unanimously.
What happened in between? The proposal had to be written down.
Supporters said critics were overreacting. This was just the beginning of a conversation, they argued. The details would come later.
Councilwoman Traci Park, who voted for the measure just two weeks earlier, eventually acknowledged the problem. David Buchan for Ca Post Last week, city staff returned with the actual language needed to move the measure forward. That is when the wheels came off the car.
On Tuesday afternoon, the City Council unanimously voted to pull the proposal from the 2026 ballot and send it back for further study.
This is how bad policy gets laundered through City Hall. Politicians vote for a vague concept wrapped in moral language. They tell voters not to worry because the details will be worked out later. Then, once the authority has been granted, the real policy is written by the same politicians and activists who avoided spelling it out before the election.
The original council vote did not create noncitizen voting in LA, and it did not put noncitizen voting itself before voters. It started a process requiring city staff to come back with ballot language and a clearer explanation of what voters would be asked to approve.
On Tuesday, the City Council unanimously voted to pull the proposal from the 2026 ballot. Ruaridh Connellan for NY Post Once that happened, the obvious questions became impossible to dodge. Who exactly would qualify to vote — green card holders, DACA recipients, temporary visa holders, illegal aliens? How would voter registration work? How would voter information be protected? Would LA have to create an entirely separate election system at taxpayer expense?
Those were not loose ends. They were the parts City Hall hoped voters would approve before anyone had to explain them.
Who gets to vote is not a detail. Whether illegal aliens are eligible is not a detail. Whether LA must build a separate election system is not a detail. Whether voter registration data could become accessible to immigration authorities is not a detail.
Those are the questions responsible lawmakers answer before they vote, not after.
The council voted first and asked questions later — an outrageous way to handle something as fundamental as voting rights.
Councilwoman Traci Park, who voted for the measure just two weeks earlier, eventually acknowledged the problem. Voters would not know what they were being asked to approve because the council itself did not yet know the answers. That admission should be stapled to every future attempt to revive this idea.
Councilman John Lee raised a concern that should matter especially to the left. San Francisco, the only California city that has implemented a noncitizen voting program, warns noncitizen voters that information provided during registration could potentially become available to immigration authorities. In other words, the same activists who frame this as pro-immigrant could be encouraging noncitizens to place their personal information into a government voting database with consequences they may not fully understand.
Supporters of the LA proposal wanted to rush ahead before answering even that basic question.
Even the proposal’s author, Councilman Hugo Soto-Martínez, appeared to recognize the political reality — acknowledging the need for more outreach and coalition building before bringing it back.
Translation: The votes, the details and the coalition were not ready.
That does not mean the idea is dead — supporters may come back in 2028 if they think the environment is friendlier. But this week’s unanimous retreat proves the original criticism was right.
LA voters were being asked to sign a blank check. The controversial parts were being pushed past the election, where future councilmembers could decide later who would vote, how broad eligibility would be, and how the system would operate.
Two weeks ago, the measure appeared headed toward the ballot. Today, it is not. The difference was not some sweeping new public debate or sudden discovery of principle inside City Hall. The difference was that the proposal finally had to be written down.
And once it was, even the LA City Council could not defend it.
If city leaders eventually bring noncitizen voting back, they should have the courage to tell the public exactly who would be eligible before the election takes place, not after. If they want illegal aliens voting in local elections, say so plainly and let voters decide that question directly.
For now, the measure is off the 2026 ballot. The scheme is not dead.
But LA City Hall just proved the critics right: Once the public could see what was actually being proposed, even the council could not stomach sending it to voters.
Jon Fleischman, a longtime strategist in California politics, writes at SoDoesItMatter.com.
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