The Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to put the question of whether noncitizens can vote in city elections on the ballot this November.
The proposal, introduced by Councilman Hugo Soto-Martinez (the son of illegal aliens), asks voters to let noncitizens vote in city and Los Angeles Unified District elections, according to ABC7. Soto-Martinez reportedly said individuals with Temporary Protected Status, permanent legal residents, and DACA recipients would benefit from the proposal, though it’s unclear what mechanisms — if any — would be in place to differentiate between illegal and legal noncitizens at the voting booth.
Yet for years, Americans who worried about noncitizen voting were told that concern was merely a fever dream. In fact, the propaganda press insisted throughout the 2024 election and beyond that there was no movement to expand voting rights to noncitizens and no reason for the adoption of measures securing elections from noncitizens because there was no reason to suspect Democrats would be comfortable with noncitizen voting.
In 2024, NPR reporter Jude Joffe-Block dismissed concerns about noncitizens, asserting there was no evidence of “a plot to get recent border crossers to vote.” On a separate occasion, Joffe-Block described Republican warnings that Democrats were allowing an open border to usher in alien voters “a false narrative.”
NBC News ran a October 2024 story headlined: ‘Big lie’ 2.0: How Trump’s false claims about noncitizens voting lay the groundwork to undermine the election.” The article mocked concerns about “a problem that doesn’t exist: a leftist plot to ‘get the illegals to become voters.’”
Last year FactCheck wrote a piece criticizing Elon Musk and DOGE for claiming “to have unearthed evidence to prove a longstanding conspiracy theory about Democrats orchestrating illegal voting by noncitizens on a scale large enough to swing national elections in their favor. But voting experts say the claims are highly dubious, and DOGE hasn’t released any evidence.”
Just this past February, New York Magazine published a piece by Ed Kilgore titled: “The GOP Is Panicking Over Noncitizen Voting. It’s Imaginary.” The piece described the issue as a “phantom menace” and a “foundational myth” within “MAGA circles.”
But Los Angeles is now proving exactly why many Americans never found these assurances convincing. The city leaders claim this proposition applies only to legal noncitizens. But that misses the point: For years Democrats and the media told Americans they were conspiracy theorists for thinking Democrats wanted any noncitizens voting. Now one of the largest cities is asking voters to give noncitizens that right.
In fact, New York City Democrats have fought to permit 800,000 noncitizens to vote in local elections, while the Washington, D.C., Board of Elections tried to preserve a district law permitting noncitizens to vote. In other words, for Democrats, the argument has already shifted from whether noncitizens should be allowed to vote at all to which noncitizens should be allowed to vote.
It also reveals the deeper problem: The left doesn’t think citizenship is a meaningful prerequisite to vote.
In fact, what’s happening in Los Angeles (and what’s happened in other municipalities across the country) explains why Democrats have fought so hard against the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, which would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.
Democrats object to the SAVE America Act because Democrats find noncitizen voting acceptable. Why else would Los Angeles Democrats approve a proposition to let noncitizens vote? Why did New York City or Washington, D.C., fight to let noncitizens vote? If local Democrat officials are comfortable extending voting rights to noncitizens at a local level, it’s hard to pretend that the national party has some deeply held principle at work when they oppose the SAVE Act.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
