State court backs SF law allowing noncitizens right to vote

Criminals from other countries will be allowed to vote in San Fran elections.  Members of the Chinese Communist Party, assigned to the Chinese consulate in San Fran will be allowed to vote.  It si possible that the NON citizens could out vote the American citizens for school board.  No need to be a U.S. citizen, just live in San Fran.

“The California Court of Appeal ruled that nothing in the state constitution prohibits cities from expanding voter eligibility in Board of Education elections to residents who are not citizens, which San Francisco voters did when they passed Proposition N in 2016.

“The Court’s decision is a wonderful victory for immigrant parents, who can continue to exercise their right to vote in San Francisco school board elections,” City Attorney David Chiu said in a statement after the ruling. “When more parents have a voice in the direction of our schools, it leads to better outcomes for all students and communities.”

Continue to exercise their right to vote?  They never had the right to vote in the United States.  Another court gone wild.

State court backs SF law allowing noncitizens right to vote

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

By Adam Shanks, SF Examiner, 8/8/23   https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/politics/state-court-backs-sf-law-allowing-noncitizens-right-to-vote/article_90c188c0-363e-11ee-a9bf-6734c3c79516.html

The City’s policy allowing noncitizens to vote in school board elections was upheld by a California court on Tuesday.

The California Court of Appeal ruled that nothing in the state constitution prohibits cities from expanding voter eligibility in Board of Education elections to residents who are not citizens, which San Francisco voters did when they passed Proposition N in 2016.

“The Court’s decision is a wonderful victory for immigrant parents, who can continue to exercise their right to vote in San Francisco school board elections,” City Attorney David Chiu said in a statement after the ruling. “When more parents have a voice in the direction of our schools, it leads to better outcomes for all students and communities.”

Proposition N allowed guardians of children residing in San Francisco and noncitizens the right to vote in local school board races, a right permanently enshrined by the Board of Supervisors in 2021. Last year, that included the February recall election that resulted in the ouster of three school board members.

Following the February election, the United States Justice Foundation and the California Public Policy Foundation filed a lawsuit that argued The City’s policy violated the state constitution.

The Superior Court of San Francisco agreed in a July 2022 ruling, writing that the city law is “contrary to the California constitution and state statutes and thus cannot stand.”

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But the Court of Appeal backed The City this week. The state constitution declares that “a United States citizen 18 years of age and resident in this State may vote,” and the appeals court judges honed in on the word “may.” Unlike the lower court, the appeals court found that the constitution “affirmatively“ lays out who is eligible to vote, but does not expressly prohibit cities from expanding that right.

Despite the lower court’s ruling, the appeals stepped in last year to temporarily block its taking effect, thus ensuring noncitizens were still allowed to vote in last November’s election.

Though significant for the individual voter, the policy does not appear to have major sway in elections. The most noncitizens to vote on a single school board election was the 235 who cast a ballot in the 2022 recall election, according to a footnote in the appeals court’s ruling. That’s compared to the total of 179,981 registered voters who cast a ballot.

Chiu noted that more than a dozen cities in the United States afford noncitizens the right to vote in some capacity, although San Francisco is the only such place in California. The ruling will have implications for Oakland, where voters in 2022 adopted a similar law to San Francisco’s.

Those seeking to overturn San Francisco’s law also argued that it would dilute the power of citizen’s votes.

In the 3-0 ruling, Justice Mark Simons rejected that logic and found that The City “could reasonably find that extending the franchise to noncitizen parents or guardians of school-age children will increase parental involvement in schools, which will in turn improve educational outcomes.”