(The Center Square) – California voters overwhelmingly rejected a ballot measure to expand the right to vote in municipal elections to illegal immigrants in the City of Santa Ana, with the measure earning the support of only a little more than one third of local voters.
“Immigrant voting cannot wait, especially in a place as diverse and immigrant-dense as Santa Ana. The enfranchisement of any new group of voters has always been difficult, whether for women and people of color, or more recently, youth (in certain municipalities), and in the state of California, parolees with felony convictions,” wrote Chinese for Affirmative Action, a San Francisco nonprofit that supports affirmative action in employment and college admissions and opposes standardized testing, in support of the measure.
San Francisco has allowed non-citizens to vote in school board elections since 2016, a practice that has been upheld in court.
Santa Ana is heavily Democratic, with 50.7% of voters registered as Democrats, followed by independents at 23.6%, and Republicans at 20.1%. Given the measure’s performance in Santa Ana, an especially progressive city, it is questionable that similar measures would pass elsewhere in the state, even if they met constitutional muster.