OPINION by RICHARD SCHMIDT Just days after a national election in which there was great concern regarding politicians’ altering the rules of voting to
Just days after a national election in which there was great concern regarding politicians’ altering the rules of voting to achieve changes in electoral outcomes, the City of San Luis Obispo announced it was limiting our vote in order to achieve changes in electoral outcomes.. We the people had never been informed it was being negotiated behind closed doors, nor had our city council ever opened up the discussion of changing our election procedure for our participation.
Under the new system imposed by our city council without democratic involvement each voter will get only one vote to cast for two council seats. The city describes this electoral “improvement” as “Citywide Single Vote.”The threat alleges the city inhibits Hispanic electoral success by having city-wide at-large elections, and demands district elections as a remedy.
When this name was proposed by a particularly arrogant now-former council member, she said the name was right because “that’s exactly what it is and where it is,” and none of the other council members knew enough to say “not so.” That meant the city also summarily dismissed another great way to elect a council – ranked choice – a method that would maximize potential Hispanic success, if that were an actual goal. Several years ago I wrote a paean in these pages to my boyhood memories of living in a ranked choice ultra-conservative city, where said electoral system gave us a good cross-section of our city’s economic, racial and philosophical diversity on our council.
For the life of me, I cannot imagine why the complainants settled for a system that would lock in the status quo. It’s pretty clear nobody benefits from this other than the current electeds, whose seat holding will not be challenged by a change to district elections or ranked choice.
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