The Ojai City Council, which considered eliminating its council districts and returning to at-large voting, ultimately decided against the move after two hours of discussion May 26.
Mayor Andy Gilman and Council member Leslie Rule supported at-large voting, but Gilman proposed doing nothing “for now” after it became clear he lacked the votes to approve the item at the meeting.
Ojai would have been the first in the state to abandon council districts had the measure passed, said Council member Rachel Lang.
Options on the May 26 agenda included returning to the City Council with an ordinance to repeal district voting or submitting a ballot measure seeking voter approval to return to at-large elections.
Ojai switched from at-large to district-based elections in December 2018 after the city received a letter from attorney Kevin Shenkman of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, a nonpartisan organization that seeks to ensure voting rights for Mexican Americans in the Southwest. The letter alleged Ojai’s at-large electoral system prevented Latino residents from electing preferred candidates, in violation of the California Voting Rights Act.
Former City Attorney Matthew Summers said at the time that similar groups had threatened litigation against hundreds of cities and school districts, with three larger cities going to trial.
In 2022, Ojai voters passed Measure M, which received more than 55% of the vote. The measure would have abandoned district-based seats in favor of ranked-choice voting beginning in November 2024, but the city never implemented it.
On May 27, City Manager Ben Harvey said by text after the meeting that he was not in Ojai in 2022, but that ranked-choice voting would be expensive to implement, “and that is what the city has been advised by the county, which would administer the voting.”
Gilman said the fact that voters supported Measure M showed there’s a desire to change voting in the city.
“In early 2024, we thought that the council could still invoke Measure M. That was the hope,” he said. “But it didn’t do that, which was its prerogative. But even if there was a technical conversation about ranked choice … there was a desire for it to change in any system that’s proposed.”
Rule agreed, adding she has heard from constituents who want to return to at-large voting. She also said she believed incumbents benefit most from district systems.
“You guys just want to be reelected without having to do the work,” she said. “That’s what I believe to be the honest truth.”
On the other side, Lang said her concerns included the “likely” cost of litigation.
Councilmember Andrew Whitman said that the item wasn’t a council priority and that at-large voting created voter dilution, which “occurs in at-large voting when a single voting block votes largely together on a single slate of at-large candidates.”
On April 28, Ojai hired Douglas Johnson of the National Demographics Corporation for up to $10,000 to evaluate census data “to ensure that there is no potentially adverse impact” from returning to an at-large system on minority voting groups, according to the staff report.
Johnson’s data review included the 2020 Census, the Census Bureau’s 2024 one-year and five-year American Community Survey, and statewide California data. The statewide data also included counts of Spanish-surname individuals.
“The district system is not helping elect Latino-preferred candidates,” he said, after discussing a 2024 race involving Michelle Pineiro, an Ojai mayoral candidate who lost to Mayor Andy Gilman.
Bethany Burgess, Ojai’s co-city attorney, said it would not be cheap to fight a legal battle over switching from district to at-large voting.
“It’s my impression these cases can be very expensive to litigate,” she said.
Most speakers supported a return to at-large voting. Former Councilmember Randy Haney said he and others on the 2018 council “made a mistake” in approving district elections.
“I made a decision completely out of fear and lack of information,” he said. “Don’t go down that path.”
Speaker Anita Cramm opposed the change, saying district elections serve an important role in neighborhood representation.
“Don’t take that away from us,” she said. “It also allows those with less time and money to mount a district-based campaign.”
Wes Woods II covers West County for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at wesley.woodsii@vcstar.com, 805-437-0262 or @JournoWes.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Ojai plan to switch from council districts to at-large voting fizzles
Reporting by Wes Woods II, Ventura County Star / Ventura County Star
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