CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2019 OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2019 OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“NON-CITIZEN VOTING PUSH BEGINS TO SPREAD”
It was
only a matter of time before the idea of allowing non-citizens to vote in some
local elections spread from San Francisco to other locales just as sympathetic
to immigrants, legal or not.
So it
was no surprise when the Los Angeles Unified
School District the other day began discussing whether
to grant voting rights in school board elections to all parents and legal
guardians of the more than 730,000 pupils in the nation’s second largest
district.
Neither
San Francisco nor Los Angeles officials appear fazed by President Trump’s years
of griping – without any proof – that undocumented immigrants regularly vote in
American elections, often in big enough numbers to change the outcomes.
He has
claimed since 2016 that his 3.1 million-vote national deficit came entirely
from droves of illegals casting ballots.
But the
commission he appointed to verify this rationalization found hardly any, and he
disbanded it in early 2018.
Still,
all Trump had to do last year was look at San Francisco if he really wanted to
see non-citizens at the polls. Not many, but some.
It was
possible for more than 1,000 (no one knows the exact number, but that’s a
frequent estimate) illegal immigrant parents to register and vote in last
year’s school board election there. But only 42 actually registered and even
fewer voted.
This
happened because federal law allows noncitizens to vote in state or local
elections, even though no state election had seen noncitizens vote legally
since Arkansas became the last state to ban the practice in 1926. Before then,
many states, cities and counties allowed noncitizens to vote in all elections
except federal ones. The thinking was that if you live here, you have a stake
in public affairs. Voting was tied to where people lived, not birthplace or
nationality.
Anti-immigrant
feeling almost completely ended that practice, and it remained extremely
uncommon until San Francisco voters okayed it via the local 2016 Proposition N.
Chicago and several small cities in Maryland also allow noncitizens to vote in
school board elections.
For the
practice to begin in Los Angeles, voters there would also have to pass a ballot
measure – and they might. That city was one of the earliest to declare itself a
sanctuary for undocumented immigrants. Local authorities still refuse to assist
federal immigration agents in apprehending all but the most violent illegal
immigrant criminals.
For
sure, Los Angeles voters could be certain that far more noncitizens would
register in their district than San Francisco’s. One reason: The Los Angeles
district is 15 times larger than its northerly counterpart.
In Los
Angeles, home to an estimated 3.5 million undocumented immigrants, any measure
allowing noncitizen voting would also have to be approved by the city council.
That’s not likely to be much of an obstacle, as the council is among the most
liberal in America.
One
positive motive behind this move seems simple: By involving more parents in
decisions about their schools, officials hope to improve student outcomes,
something urgently needed in the academically underperforming district.
Said
Los Angeles school board member Kelly Gomez, who encountered many immigrant
parents during her 2017 campaign, “Many of them were very interested and
passionate about the issues…but didn’t have the ability to decide for themselves
who would represent them on the school board.”
Still,
the district would have to solve one big problem before it could expect
large-scale noncitizen participation in future elections: How to keep the
identities of noncitizens who register to vote away from federal immigrant
agents.
That
problem plagued San Francisco last year, because voting rolls are public. The
fact they could be identified as undocumented and perhaps deported was one big
reason noncitizens registered in tiny numbers when they got the chance.
That’s
one problem the Los Angeles district will have to solve if it really wants to
open things up for noncitizens.
But
officials there and elsewhere ought to think hard before they proceed with
this, because it would remove one more distinction between citizens and
noncitizens, just five years after illegal immigrants became eligible for
California drivers licenses. Removing such distinctions diminishes incentive to
work toward citizenship, and citizenship is a necessity for immigrants wanting
to advance in society.
-30-
Email Thomas Elias
at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most
Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It,"
is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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