A Santa Ana ballot measure that would have granted noncitizens the right to vote in local elections is failing with voters.
Of the more than 55,000 ballots counted so far, nearly 62% rejected Measure DD. But supporters say the fight to enfranchise Santa Ana’s tens of thousands of noncitizen residents is far from over.
Measure DD would have required the Santa Ana City Council to adopt an ordinance granting noncitizens the right to vote in local elections. Santa Ana would have become the first California city to extend the right to vote beyond those with citizenship – San Francisco and Oakland have passed similar measures for school board elections.
“It took San Francisco three tries to get noncitizen voting passed, and now we have a stronger and larger coalition of residents who are more emboldened,” said Carlos Perea, executive director of the Harbor Institute for Immigrant & Economic Justice, one of the groups campaigning for Measure DD.
Those opposed argued voting rights are earned with citizenship. They also argued it would cost the city too much – Santa Ana would likely have to conduct local elections independently instead of through the Orange County Registrar of Voters.
In Santa Ana, noncitizens make up 24% of the city’s population and contributed an estimated $10.5 billion in taxes in 2018, according to the American Immigration Council. However, they are shut out from deciding how their local taxpayer dollars are spent, Measure DD opponents argued.
The big push in this campaign was to educate voters about the fact that noncitizen voting can be a possibility in Orange County, Perea said.
“The fact that it was on the ballot in Santa Ana, in Orange County, in many ways has helped us popularize it among our base,” Perea said. “I think we’re going to be in a way different position next time we push for this.”
The voter turnout results also show why the measure is needed, Mai Nguyen Do, research and policy manager at the Harbor Institute, said, pointing to how council wards that are similarly sized by population are not similarly represented in terms of the number of eligible voters.
Santa Ana’s Ward 5, for example, has 17,596 registered voters, compared to Ward 3, with 27,566, the highest number of registered voters in the city, according to the OC Registrar of Voters.
“If you look at the returns by ward, not only are there fewer ballots cast in the wards that have large noncitizen resident populations, but there are actually just fewer voters,” Do said. “District lines are not drawn by population of voters. They’re drawn by (the number of) residents, by census numbers. That doesn’t count whether you’re a voter or not.”
“Because we have minor swaths of the city that are disenfranchised, there are twice as many votes in some areas of the city, than others, who are able to make their voices heard,” said Do, adding that the results strengthened their resolve.
“Early votes, (we) definitely expected them to not super go our way,” Do said. “But also, as the returns come in, it’s definitely a reminder to us as to why enfranchising everyone is really important in a city like this.”
Next time, the goal will be to build a bigger coalition and reach more voters, Perea said.
“The beautiful thing about what we did this time around was that we put it on the ballot, and now people know what is possible,” Perea said. “Now we have a lot of residents, who are noncitizens, more involved in demanding for political rights because they understand now how important their labor, their contributions are to the city.”
Councilmember Benjamin Vazquez said more people need to know that from a legal standpoint, noncitizen voting is a possibility. He, along with councilmembers Johnathan Ryan Hernandez, Jessie Lopez and Thai Viet Phan, voted last year to place the question before the public in this election.
“When we talk about women fighting for their right to vote, that initial campaign started in 1890 and women were allowed to vote in 1920 – 30 years of struggle,” Vazquez said. “Not that I want this to take 30 years or expect it to, but there are steps we’re taking and understanding as we build and educate. We’re going to have to have these conversations, not only during campaign season, but all the time now.”
With nearly 40% approval from voters, Vazquez said the next hurdle is to find another 20% of voters to support the measure.
“Once we can find the people who didn’t vote yes, we can talk to them and bring them in,” Vazquez said. “Have discussions, do the work that has to be done, and hopefully we win them over.”
Perea said now that the possibility of noncitizen voting has been presented to residents, it’s going to be hard to take that away.
“I think for Santa Ana,” Perea said, “it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when this is going to happen.”
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