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Are you sure about that? Only federal offices have a baked in requirement that voters be citizens. On the municipal level many west coast cities have opened up local elections to all residents regardless of citizenship. I don't know about Berkeley specifically (its been close to 20 years since I went to school there) but its neighbors Oakland[1] and SF[2] both have opened at least some local elections to non-citizen residents.

Like I said, I don't know the answer and while I made a token effort to check, Berkeley city code actually seems somewhat difficult to find from a first party source. Just want to make sure this wasn't an off the cuff remark.

[1]: https://ballotpedia.org/Oakland,_California,_Measure_S,_Nonc...

[2]: https://ballotpedia.org/San_Francisco,_California,_Non-Citiz...




Almost all of those electoral expansions to non-citizens that I am aware of are limited just to school board elections.




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