Ranked choice voting an alternative to district elections – Foothills Sun Gazette
Lawsuits across the Golden State
Passed under the watch of Governor Gray Davisone of two American governors ever to be recalled and removed from officethe California Voting Rights Act of 2001 was intended to expand voting rights of minorities whose votes were being diluted in the at-large election system.
Pedro Hernandez, a senior policy coordinator with FairVotea non-profit, nonpartisan organization aimed at empowering voters and fair representation in democracysaid vote dilution in at-large elections comes from bloc voting.
In the at-large system you might traditionally see, lets say three seats are up, so everyone has three votes, and you vote for three candidates and the highest vote getters end up winning, Hernandez said. If the largest bloc of voters all vote the same, they can effectively shut out minority representation because the largest group might vote for the same three candidates. Thats the vote dilution part. Thats where you see racially polarized voting.
Empowerment from the CVRA came in the form of firepower for lawyers to litigate California cities using at-large election systems where voting was allegedly racially polarized, resulting in minority vote dilution. The open-for-interpretation language spurred hundreds of or else lettersthreats of litigationand lawsuits brought down upon California cities from legal firms on behalf of voting rights activist groups. One such group, the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, claims to have transformed over 100 jurisdictions using the CVRA.
Listed in the CVRA is the requirement for cities to pay the prevailing plaintiff party all attorney and litigation fees. Kevin Shenkman of Shenkman & Hughes law firm is the Malibu lawyer behind many litigation threats and lawsuits against California cities, including the high-profile cases of Palmdale and Santa Monica.
Contrary to its counterpart cities Lindsay and Woodlakewhich remain using at-large election systems in largely Hispanic communitiesExeter is a mostly white community. The town of just over 10,500 was intimidated into a district voting system in 2017, when Shenkman threatened suit by alleging that voting within Exeter is racially polarized, resulting in minority vote dilution, and therefore Exeters at-large elections violate the California Voting Rights Act of 2001. Shenkman did not respond to a request for an interview with The Sun-Gazette.
In his letter, Shenkman referred to his then-recent win over the city of Palmdale, where the courts forced the city to pay Shenkman and Palmdale voters Juan Jaurequi, Jesse Smith and Nigel Holly $4.5 million plus interest. At the time, no California city had ever won a CVRA litigation case over a plaintiff claiming minority vote dilution. Exeters bigger neighbor Visalia had also just forked out legal fees in a similar districts scuffle with plaintiffs.
Exeters budget was a concern at the time as well. In 2017, Exeter was projected to lose roughly 22% of its $2.5 million in funds over the next year. Exeters empty pockets likely led city officials to an easy decision: the path of least resistance. A one-time settlement fee of up to $30,000 for lawyers to go away included hiring a demographer to draw the citys district lines, dividing the two-stoplight town into five districts.
Exeter saw about a 79% turnout at 4,086 votes cast in the record-breaking Nov. 2020 presidential election. None of those votes were cast for new city council members, however, because all of Exeters new council members had been appointed in-lieu three months earlier due to a lack of candidates.
Since Exeters switch to districts in 2017, Teresa Boyce is the only city council candidate to be elected by democratic process, after defeating Melanie Morton by 44 votes in 2018. Boyce has since stepped down from the council.
Split up between 5 districts, the Nov. 2020 presidential election turnout in Exeter settled out to about 810 votes per district. Finding qualified candidates to run in a democratic election among the roughly 1,040 registered voters in each of Exeters districts has proven near impossible so far. Without democratic elections, low bars like 20 signatures from neighbors make for easy entry into a policy-making position.
Normally, a charter amendment like changing the way elected officials are democratically elected requires a vote from the people. This didnt happen in the strapped-for-cash city of Exeter, which then-City Manager Randy Groom estimated an election for the one item to cost roughly $20,000 in taxpayer money.
In a previous interview with The Sun-Gazette, Groom, now Visalias soon-retiring city manager, said Visalians had the opportunity to vote to move to a district system twice after the city received its or else letter, and voted it down both times in favor of at-large elections. District elections were then judicially imposed despite voter preference, with the first district elections beginning in 2016.
Since the switch from at-large to district elections, zero Hispanic candidates have been elected to Visalia City Council. Visalias only Hispanic elected official in the last 20 years was Jesus Gamboa, who was the top vote-getter in the 2005 at-large election and was elected by a large margin in 2001 and by four points in 1997 at-large elections. Gamboa served as the citys mayor.
Four out of five members of Visalias current all-white council were elected to their seat at a point in time, but Brian Poochigian is the only sitting council member to have actually been democratically elected in over four years, winning a contested election in 2018.
The same council recently struck down a mechanism for Visalians to hold them accountable, when in January they removed questions from the yearly public opinion survey about the citys COVID-19 response and enforcement. The council had instructed Visalia PD to take a position of education and public cooperation over enforcement. Many of Visalias businesses have been openly defiant of state law and public health guidelines for months.
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Ranked choice voting an alternative to district elections - Foothills Sun Gazette
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