Quick Take
To prevent a potential lawsuit, the Capitola City Council will convene a special session on Thursday night to discuss switching from at-large to district-based elections. The basis of the complaint is that at-large elections disenfranchise minority communities.
➤ Para leer el artículo en español, haga clic aquí.
The Capitola City Council will discuss potentially switching from an at-large election system to district-based as the city faces potential litigation from a Southern California law firm.
Lawyers at Malibu-based Shenkman & Hughes sent a letter to city officials in March, recommending that it voluntarily begin the process to switch to district-based elections by a May 5 deadline or face a lawsuit.
The basis of the firm’s complaint is that at-large elections disenfranchise minority communities.
At a special session Thursday, city councilmembers will decide whether to pass a resolution declaring the city’s intent to start transitioning to district-based elections and to authorize an agreement with a demographer consultant.
If the resolution passes, the city would have 90 days to complete the move to district elections, according to a staff report. The process would include two public hearings prior to maps being drawn, along with public outreach.
The law firm claims the current way Capitola residents elect city councilmembers violates the California Voting Rights Act of 2001 (CVRA). The law is meant to give disenfranchised minority communities more voting power in local elections. Nearly 229 cities in California have switched to district-based elections, according to a Claremont McKenna College report.
Capitola City Attorney Marc Tran told the city council last week that cases involving the CVRA do not require plaintiffs to prove whether or not cities with at-large elections are intentionally discriminatory, which makes these types of cases difficult to defend.
Shenkman & Hughes has a history of suing or threatening to sue cities and school boards since 2012, and has won almost all the lawsuits the firm has brought forward, according to a report by the San Francisco Chronicle.
The law firm claims that Capitola’s at-large system dilutes the ability of Latino residents to elect a candidate of their choosing “or otherwise influence the outcome of the city’s council election.” Latinos currently make up about 26.5% of Capitola’s nearly 10,000 resident population, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
Under Capitola’s at-large system, candidates for city council are able to run for any open seat and represent the community broadly. All voters elect who represents those seats. For example, in the November 2024 election, during which two seats on the city council were open, the top two vote-getters were declared the winners.
In district-based elections, however, city councilmembers represent a specific neighborhood, in which they also live. Voters get to vote only for candidates representing their district. The cities of Santa Cruz and Watsonville use this model to elect city councilmembers. Scotts Valley, like Capitola, has at-large elections.
Shenkman & Hughes uses the recent election as an example of how Capitola’s at-large structure violates the California Voting Rights Act.
“Enrique Dolmo Jr. received significant support from Latino voters, but lost due to a lack of support from non-Hispanic white voters,” according to the March letter. Dolmo received 1,430 votes in 2024 city council voting, more than 1,300 votes behind the top vote-getter.
In 2020, the City of Santa Cruz faced a similar lawsuit threat. Santa Cruz officially switched to district-based elections after voters approved Measure E, a voter initiative that established the city’s six districts and a directly elected mayor, and held its first district election during the March 2024 primary.
During Santa Cruz’s transition out of at-large elections, former politicians told Lookout in 2022 that they were skeptical of how district-based elections would lead to diverse representation on the council.
The City of Watsonville faced a lawsuit in 1989, which was taken up to federal court level, and lost. The court found that Watsonville’s at-large elections were diluting the voting power of its Latino residents, who make up a majority of its population.
Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.
