Orange County Superior Court Judge Kimberly Knill ruled Thursday that a Santa Ana ballot measure asking voters to decide whether to allow noncitizens to vote in municipal elections will need to be rewritten before ballots are printed in August.
Knill made clear that this case is not about whether noncitizens should be able to vote in municipal elections, a right she said has been established by case law in certain circumstances in city elections. Rather, the case is about whether specific language city officials used to draft the ballot measure is prejudicial and could sway the results of the election.
The ballot measure had been set to ask voters: “Shall the city of Santa Ana city charter be amended to allow, by the November 2028 general municipal election, noncitizen city residents, including those who are taxpayers and parents, to vote in all city of Santa Ana municipal elections?”
The phrase “including those who are taxpayers and parents” needs to be removed, Knill ordered.
In a lawsuit filed in May with the county’s Superior Court, James V. Lacy, a local attorney and conservative pundit, along with the United States Justice Foundation, a conservative legal nonprofit, the California Public Policy Foundation, a think tank, and Pasquale Talarico, a Santa Ana resident, argued the wording “including those who are taxpayers and parents” could be misleading to voters.
On Thursday, Knill agreed with them and said she will promptly issue an order for the OC Registrar of Voters to remove that controversial clause from the measure before ballots are printed in August.
California elections code requires that ballot language be “neither argumentative nor likely to create prejudice for or against the measure.” Knill said the way Santa Ana wrote the measure would “likely create prejudice for the ballot.”
“The introduction of the words taxpayers and parents is not impartial,” Knill said. “Instead it reflects partiality because it excludes other categories of voters who are not taxpayers and parents.”
“The language is flawed because it implies a no vote will disenfranchise only taxpayers and parents, which is not true,” she added. “It will mean all noncitizens cannot vote. Paying taxes or parenting a child are not relevant to the ballot question.”
When the city originally formulated the ballot question last year, the contentious phrase was not included. Only later did the Santa Ana City Council add the part about taxpayers and parents as it was discussing the measure.
Since the lawsuit was filed, Knill indicated that she would rule the ballot language would have to be changed. However, she gave Santa Ana officials an opportunity to voluntarily rewrite the measure or make the case for not doing so.
In a split decision in June, the City Council voted not change the ballot measure.
“The language, I find to be unbiased. It is simply describing who noncitizens are,” Councilmember Johnathan Hernandez said at the time. “Noncitizens pay over $145 million in taxes in Orange County today. Orange County wouldn’t be the county that it is without noncitizens.”
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Councilmember David Penaloza, however, said that while the original phrasing brought forward “neutral, adequate” ballot language, it was replaced with “disingenuous” language intended to “persuade and influence” voters.
“This is simply being done so when somebody goes to the ballot box, they read, ‘Oh yeah, of course parents and taxpayers can vote,’” he said.
Ballots will be mailed out started Oct. 7 and election day is Nov. 5.
Staff writer Destiny Torres contributed to this report.