S.F. Voters to Decide if Noncitizens Can Vote

Testing state law for the second time this year, San Francisco city leaders approved a controversial ballot proposal Tuesday that could allow noncitizens to vote in school board elections.

The proposal, the first in the state but not the nation, would permit any adult with a child in public school -- parent, guardian or caretaker -- to vote regardless of citizenship status. Backers of the measure acknowledged that it probably would face legal challenges since state law limits voting to citizens. But they said a local exemption was allowable because San Francisco is a charter city that can set its own laws.

“Every time you’re on the cutting edge of any issue you’re going to have legal issues,” said Supervisor Matt Gonzalez, a Green Party member who introduced the proposal. “This body has taken a strong position on things like gay marriage, domestic partnership.... I don’t think this is any different.”

The city made national headlines in February when Mayor Gavin Newsom allowed thousands of same-sex couples to receive marriage licenses.

The state Supreme Court halted those unions; the issue remains in the courts.

Even in this consistently left-leaning city that is accustomed to pushing the boundaries on social issues, the school matter has stirred strong opinions. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat and former San Francisco mayor, issued a statement this week saying that “under no circumstances” should noncitizens be allowed to vote because it would discourage immigrants from becoming citizens. Local Chinese American elected officials are divided over the measure, while Latino leaders have mostly remained silent.

Still, the Board of Supervisors’ decision to put the matter before voters on Nov. 2 passed 9-2, with little discussion.

The San Francisco Unified School District has 60,000 students, more than half of whom come from homes where English is not their first language. Students of Chinese heritage make up 31% of the student population, the largest ethnic bloc, and 21% of students are Latino.

David Chiu, an early proponent of the ballot proposal, said that at least one in three students in San Francisco’s public schools has an immigrant parent. Chiu, co-founder of the public relations firm Grassroots Enterprise, said his organization had pushed for voting rights in part because long waits to become citizens had left immigrant parents disenfranchised when their children were in school.

The push to allow noncitizens a say in the makeup of school boards is viewed as a first step to broader voting rights -- both by those who say it is a good move that will increase public participation and by those who argue that it violates the spirit of American democracy.

The concept of noncitizen voters is not new. Limiting voting privileges to American citizens has occurred only since World War I. Noncitizens can vote in school board elections in a few cities, including Chicago.

Gonzalez has said that he would like to see noncitizens allowed to vote in all municipal elections, a practice in place in Takoma Park, Md., and a few other cities.

Jim Rivaldo, a veteran San Francisco political consultant, said the proposal would “obviously play well in liberal and immigrant-heavy areas of the city.”

“If it can succeed anywhere in California,” Rivaldo said, “it will be in San Francisco.”

In a state where many cities have increasingly large numbers of immigrants, legal and illegal, any extension of voting privileges could have significant political ramifications.

“If you give noncitizens the right to vote it has partisan implications,” said Steve Camarota, of the Washington-based Center for Immigrant Studies, a nonpartisan think tank that supports strict enforcement of immigration laws. “You aren’t going to see it proposed at the statewide level in a bitterly divided state or in a city closely divided on partisan lines.”

At Tuesday’s board meeting, Gonzalez took issue with the perception that he backed such rights to expand the likely voting base for progressives.

“First-generation immigrants tend to be more conservative,” he said.

In San Francisco, the proposal has pitted some on the far left against relatively more conservative officials, with the city attorney reportedly advising officials that such a measure was unlikely to pass court tests even if put on the November ballot.

Newsom had no comment on the issue.

There has been growing sentiment in some communities for noncitizens voting in local elections. In New York, where noncitizens voted in school board elections from 1968 until last year when Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg reorganized the school board, some politicians have pushed for noncitizens to vote in all local elections.

Those opposed to allowing noncitizens voting rights say to do so would erode the meaning of citizenship.

Feinstein, in her statement, said that a better solution would be to speed the process by which immigrants can become citizens.

School board President Dan Kelly, who opposes the proposal, said it has little to do with giving parents more say in schools.

“It’s not an issue about education. The issue is about voting rights and citizenship,” Kelly said. “The question of who has the right to vote is ultimately tied to citizenship, legitimately so.”

He said he was “mystified” as to why school board elections had been singled out. Kelly said the school district sued to overturn Proposition 187, the 1994 ballot initiative that had sought to prohibit illegal immigrants from public services such as schools and medical care.

Kelly said the school district has avenues for participation for noncitizen parents such as PTAs and school committees. The district also provides Mandarin and Spanish translators to keep parents informed and to help them address school officials, he said.

But state Assemblyman Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) supported the measure and said he would campaign for its passage.

“About half the children in San Francisco are white yet barely 10% are in public schools,” he said. “It’s clear to me whites left the public schools and the only ones left are minorities.... [Noncitizens’] children’s future is in the public schools and I think we should give them a voice.”

San Francisco Supervisor Fiona Ma, however, opposed the ballot proposal after repeatedly speaking against it. Ma, whose parents became citizens after immigrating to the United States from China, said “voting is a privilege reserved for citizens.”

Ma said she believed that her colleagues went ahead with the measure, despite legal advice that it would not hold up in the courts, because they hope that substantial support for the proposal in November would put political pressure on the state Legislature to change the state Constitution. Further, she said she suspects that it is intended to spur similar movements in Los Angeles and other cities.

A broader move in San Francisco to allow noncitizens to vote in all local elections fizzled out in 1996 after then-city attorney Louise Renne persuaded a state judge to block the initiative from appearing on the ballot, arguing that it violated the state Constitution’s requirement that voters be citizens.

Renne has opposed the recent proposal, asking if it meant Osama bin Laden could vote.

Others said the restriction should be challenged.

“More and more as the demographics of California are shifting and there are more and more noncitizens who comprise our communities, it is important that we allow those persons an avenue to have a voice in the policies and how they are formed -- especially when it relates to their children,” said Steve Reyes, of the Los Angeles-based Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

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Hollis and Lagos, who reported from San Francisco, are special correspondents; Garvey is a Times staff writer.