LA City Council tried to hide details of noncitizen voting and failed
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.Well, the details came later.And the details killed it.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.That was the plan.It just did not survive contact with paper.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.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 becom...