Insidious truth behind LA City Council’s push for noncitizen voting

Well, that was quick.

The LA City Council yanked its own ballot initiative proposal that, if passed in November, would have allowed noncitizens to vote in local elections.

There was nothing in the city’s proposal that would have prevented illegal immigrants from voting.

People with no right to be in the country would be making major decisions about the management and the future of one of America’s great cities.

What would prevent some future, federal administration from throwing the country’s borders open to tip the balance of power in LA toward one party or another — or, perhaps, toward socialism?

Nothing.

No one stopped to ask whether giving noncitizens the right to vote locally would even be constitutional. It is, at least, a complicated question.

Also, no one seemed to have given any thought to how the city would run such an election, and how noncitizens could appear on voter rolls for local elections while also being sequestered from state and federal elections.

It is telling that the initial vote to put noncitizen voting on the ballot was 10-5. It was framed as a way to give hard-working immigrants a voice. The subsequent vote to pull the ballot measure was 14-0.

Whoever is pushing this idea behind the scenes must have realized that the backlash was so severe that it threatened to become a major national issue.

But don’t imagine for a minute that they have given up.

They will try in a smaller city, or wait until a special election rather than pushing the issue forward during a key midterm election.

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They will bide their time to see how the country reacts to the wave of socialists that is crashing over Democratic Party incumbents from New York to Colorado.

And then, when things have settled, they will try it again.

This country welcomes legal immigrants, and always should.

But citizenship is a privilege that must be earned. It should never be granted cheaply as a prize for showing up, like an illegal migration participation trophy.

Voting isn’t just about having a say in how taxes are spent. It is also about understanding how our Constitution works.

If you don’t understand our system of rights, checks and balances, you may as well just vote yourself as much of someone else’s property as possible.

We have enough distrust of our voting system as it is, here in California. Keep noncitizens out of it.