Could Latino Vote Help Build Sonoma Hospital?

Only 7 percent of Latinos registered, but what about letting non-citizens vote?

Sonoma Valley Sun

Want a new hospital? Get the Latino community involved.Consultant Kathy Yarbrough offered that advice on Aug. 7 when she spoke to the Sonoma Valley Health Care Coalition, the ad hoc group that meets every Monday night to help craft a bond proposal for a new Sonoma Valley Hospital that will capture the required two-thirds voters’ support.

Yarbrough, the executive director for a coalition of rural hospitals, said that Tehachapi, a city east of Bakersfield, tried to get a hospital built only to have voters reject it by a 3-to-1 margin.But the second time around, Tehachapi voters approved a new, $21 million hospital — a success that Yarbrough attributed to Latino support.

“We really worked on getting with the Hispanic community,” she said. Tehachapi hospital supporters set up booths in front of Mexican restaurants, they included Latinos in focus groups and surveys, and they held meetings at the homes of Latino community leaders, Yarbrough said.Would such a campaign make a difference here?

One thing is obvious: Few, if any, Latinos have been involved at the Monday night hospital coalition meetings. Latinos also were noticeably absent at the three town hall meetings held prior to the hospital board’s decision to introduce Measure C, the failed proposal to build a $148 million hospital on Fifth Street West. And Latinos are underrepresented as voters in the Valley.

Latinos account for about 21 percent of Sonoma County’s population. Yet they only make up an estimated 7 percent of the registered voters in the Sonoma Valley Health Care District, according to the Sun’s analysis of computerized voter registration records. (Geographically, the hospital district includes all of Sonoma Valley up to Kenwood.)

The hospital district currently has 20,029 registered voters. The Sun estimated that 1,373 of those — or 7 percent — were Latino voters, based on their last names.Of course, many of the Sonoma Valley’s Latino residents aren’t citizens and can’t vote. The Valley was home to 3,985 non-citizens, according to year 2000 U.S. Census tract data.

If all those non-citizens were old enough to vote, they could boost voter participation by 20 percent in the hospital district.But non-citizens can’t vote, right?Wrong.It’s a little-known fact that the U.S. Constitution allows non-citizens to vote.

Non-citizen voting?“Philosophically, I’d have to say I’m opposed to it,” said hospital board member John MacConaghy, invoking a common sentiment. Although I’m very pro-immigration and pro-inclusion of our immigrant community, to me, my whole definition of a voter is a citizen.” But, surprising as it may sound, some communities have increased Latino participation by allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections.

For example, Chicago allows non-citizens to vote in school board elections. And in 2004, a referendum in San Francisco that would have let non-citizens vote for school board seats failed narrowly, by 51 percent to 49 percent.Hospital board member Mike Smith was intrigued by the idea.“It sounds like a good idea, if you could get people organized,” Smith said. “It certainly would change the dynamics of a lot of stuff.”

Non-citizen voting used to be widespread. For the first 150 years of U.S. history, from 1776 to 1926, 22 states and federal territories allowed non-citizens to vote in local, state and even federal elections. But the rights were gradually repealed, due to such things as anti-immigrant sentiment, southern states’ resentment of immigrants’ opposition to slavery, and the Red Scare after World War I.That’s according to Ron Hayduk, a political science professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, who’s written articles and a book about the subject titled “Democracy for All: Restoring Immigrant Voting Rights in the United States.”

Hayduk’s point is that the United States has an estimated 12 million legal permanent residents who may work, pay taxes, send their children to school and participate in the military — yet aren’t allowed to vote.He got interested in the subject while working for New York City’s Voter Assistance Commission, which encourages and helps people to register to vote.Hayduk looked at U.S. Census data and found there was a huge non-citizen population that wasn’t eligible to vote.

Around the same time, he heard news of an effort to register non-citizens in Tacoma Park, Md.His reaction to the Maryland campaign was, “Oh wow, really? You can do this? It’s legal?” Hayduk recalled.“I think it’s fascinating that this history has been effectively erased from our national (memory),” Hayduk told the Sun.

Most people know about poll taxes, literacy tests and other methods that the segregated South used to prevent blacks and poor whites from voting prior to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Hayduk said, but few people realize non-citizens can vote.

Arguments pro and conThe most common objection to non-citizen voting is that immigrants should be citizens first, said an article co-written by Hayduk and Michele Wucker, of the World Policy Institute.But their argument against that is that the naturalization process has become cumbersome and slow and can take years, especially after Sept. 11, 2001.Their article said that opponents also question loyalty of immigrants.“Yet most immigrants are already members of their communities and assume all the other responsibilities of local citizenship.

They already have an inherent interest in safe, clean streets and services the community need to survive,” Hayduk and Wucker responded.They also note that non-citizens are not a homogenous group.“Some evidence from research on ... non-citizen voting in Europe suggests only modest shifts in the political balance of power, if any, would occur,” the article said.

Matt Gonzalez is the San Francisco city supervisor who introduced Proposition F, the 2004 ballot proposition that would have let non-citizens to vote in school board elections in the city.“There’s talk about doing it again, because we got so close,” Gonzales told the Sun.

Roughly one-third of San Francisco’s students have immigrant parents.Interestingly, Gonzales said voters turned down Proposition F in some of the traditionally more progressive neighborhoods, such as Haight-Ashbury, and approved it in more conservative – yet immigrant-heavy – neighborhoods, such as the Excelsior District.

Proposition F’s opponents said the measure would require an amendment to California’s constitution, but supporters believed that wasn’t necessary and that the measure could stave off any court challenges.