HomeMy WebLinkAbout11/19/2024 Item 7a, Luo
Colunga-Lopez, Andrea
Yiming Luo <
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Subject:CC Public comment - 11/19/2024 Item 7a, Luo
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Hello Mayor Stewart, councilmembers, city manager McDonald, and staff,
I appreciate the council putting this matter for a public meeting to show the city’s commitment to public
transparency. I still remember providing public comment last year for a closed session on this topic and
urging the council to consider alternatives to satisfying Shenkman’s demands such as ranked-choice
voting. I noted that by-district elections could divide the city along somewhat arbitrary lines and would
force councilmembers to consider a narrow set of interests specific to their district rather than what
would be best for the city as a whole. If your district’s councilmember holds strong positions on an issue,
you might be discouraged to voice your opinion if you have an opposing view, since they might not really
care. This is worsened by an implied notion that people “shouldn’t” contact councilmembers outside of
their district.
And now as a poll worker who worked in the March primaries and this recent November presidential
election, I have the experience of processing TENS, possibly DOZENS of provisional ballots. Just two
weeks ago, I skipped class and worked from 6am to 10pm at one of the precincts at Grace Central Coast,
where I ran into Deputy City Manager Hermann and my statistics professor! How exciting. Anyways, this
year, one of the county or state websites erroneously directed voters from all across the county to vote in
San Luis Obispo. Since my precinct was the closest to the county elections office on Monterey, the
county guided a lot of them to our precinct. I had to tell voters from Paso Robles, Atascadero, Arroyo
Grande, etc. that they wouldn’t be able to vote in their city’s elections if they chose to vote here (like
Paso school board, AG mayor, etc.).
But most importantly, there were some SLO voters came to our precinct swearing that they had always
voted at Grace Central Coast, only for us to tell them their new precinct was at the Vets’ Hall or the
Grange Hall. If the city does not follow the staff recommendation, it would either transition immediately
to district-based elections, or would likely face litigation à la Santa Monica, and eventually end up in
district-based elections. In that case, there would need to be extensive voter education and outreach
efforts to tell people to only vote in-person at their designated precinct. From what I observed while
helping voters two weeks ago, a lot of people just threw up their hands and voted provisionally since they
were already there, even though in one case, the person’s precinct was on the same street they lived on
in Atascadero. When every vote counts, errors like these will erode faith in the elections process.
The ideal solution to this would be ranked choice voting, which would allow niche or smaller candidates
to have a better shot at winning and would allow election of broadly popular candidates. Unfortunately,
there are barriers out of the city’s control on implementing this system. I do appreciate, however, that
the council included supporting amendments to the Election Code such as ranked choice voting and
cumulative voting in its legislative action platform last year.
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Negotiated between Shenkman and city staff, this compromise before the council is the best action to
take, as it is informed by all parties, including community groups who agree that district-based elections
would be detrimental to furthering equity and participation. However, I do have some questions, which
hopefully staff can answer:
• Is there any precedent for these types of agreements between jurisdictions and CVRA complainants,
or would SLO be one of the first cities to enter into such an agreement?
• How was the $70,000 SVREP attorney’s fee, $10,000 election review fee, and $50,000 referee fee
determined? Does the city have a timesheet/time tracker for the billable hours for the meetings with
SVREP?
• What organizations or people would act as referees if the city and Shenkman disagree on the
usefulness of the single citywide vote after 2026/28 elections?
Cheers,
Yiming
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