HomeMy WebLinkAbout12/3/2019 Item A, Closed Session, Schmidt
Wilbanks, Megan
From:Richard Schmidt <slobuild@yahoo.com>
Sent:Saturday, November
To:E-mail Council Website; Dietrick, Christine
Subject:District elections lawsuit
Dear Council Members,
I do hope that you respond favorably to the threat of a suit over our city's unfair election system. This is
an opportunity to make our representation fairer.
District elections would be a wonderful change, producing diverse and robust retail neighborhood
politics rather than high-cost factional winner-take-all politics.
However, given the fact we have no barrio or ghetto in our city, district elections would probably make
little difference in the outcome sought by plaintiffs. An even better system for that would be ranked
choice elections, which are the gold standard for diversity, and are used in some California cities. One
doesn't know if the plaintiff lawyer would be open to that alternative without approaching him, but
perhaps if in good faith you offered it as a better solution for his client, by explaining our demographic
geography, he might be receptive.
For ranked choice, it would be desirable to increase the council from 5 to 7, so more diverse choices can
be available to voters in that type of city-wide election.
While you're reforming the electoral system, I'd urge you to also consider eliminating the elected mayoral
seat, making it a rotational office, as we are familiar with from the Board of Supervisors, where
personalities aside it functions well. This would create one additional opportunity for either district voting
or ranked choice voting.
You may be interested in my article on ranked choice as it might be applied to our city. I recall Michael
Lattner also wrote one.
https://calcoasttimes.com/2018/11/13/it-is-time-to-stop-wasting-our-votes/
Sincerely,
Richard Schmidt
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