Huntington Beach residents could soon be forced to change how they vote for city council members after a judge ordered the city to shift to a new, ranked-choice voting system that would put all seven members of the dais on the ballot at once and potentially cost more money.
The order from Orange County Superior Court Judge Craig Griffin comes after a yearslong legal battle where Surf City leaders opposed changing their current at-large voting system, which sees all voters select city council members in staggered terms for office with one vote, usually in general elections in the fall.
Read: Huntington Beach Becomes Latest OC City Hit With Voting Rights Lawsuit
Surf City is the latest in a long line of Orange County municipalities forced to change their voting systems under the California Voting Rights Act, with courts finding that the at-large system can disenfranchise minority voters.
To read the decision, click here.
Huntington Beach Mayor Casey McKeon did not respond to requests for comment.
Victor Valladeres, the resident who sued the city to force a shift, praised the court’s decision on Thursday, saying it was the end of a campaign he launched in 2017 to make a change in local elections.
“I got a lot of pushback from the majority council in the past. When certain candidates were elected in 2017, I brought up the idea of electoral voting districts and they were not in favor,” Valladeres said in an interview. I’m optimistic that things will be better with the victory that we had in court to get candidates that have the best interest of the community and not big donors.”
Kevin Shenkman, the lawyer who represented Valladeres, and has been the lead lawyer on many Voting Rights Act lawsuits across Southern California, also praised the court’s ruling in a Thursday interview.
“I think ranked-choice voting with all seven seats up at the same time will also give sane residents of Huntington Beach the ability to bring some sanity to a city council that has otherwise demonstrated its insanity over the past several years,” Shenkman said.
Unlike most cities that were forced to switch to district voting, Judge Griffin ordered the city to instead try out a different system called ranked-choice voting and consolidate their elections so that the entire city council is on the ballot at once every four years.
Ranked-choice voting allows residents to rank the candidates in order of preference.
Under ranked-choice voting, if there are seven open city council seats, voters rank the candidates one through seven and the top-ranked candidates head to a runoff, unless someone gets over half the first place votes.
Griffin noted the ranked-choice option would work better than district voting, saying it helped out minority voters while also holding to the city charter’s goal of letting all residents vote for every member of the city council, even though they would be forced to elect them all at once.
“Regardless of remedy imposed, some charter eggs will be broken in the making of this omelet,” Griffin wrote. “Ranked-choice voting continues to allow voters full participation in the elections as contemplated by the city charter.”
The ranked-choice system is not currently used by any other cities in Orange County. But Irvine leaders are debating asking their voters about it in the fall despite concerns it could quadruple the costs of holding an election.
Read: Irvine Looks to Ask Voters About Ranked Choice Voting In November
It also comes as city leaders are pushing to implement voter ID regulations on local elections, something multiple state courts have told them they cannot do.
Read: Is Huntington Beach’s Voter ID Law Finished?
Griffin ordered the system to be implemented by the November election this year, but noted that if the county registrar could not implement the system by then it could be pushed to the 2028 election.
If it is delayed to 2028, any city council members elected in the fall will serve a two-year term instead of a four-year term.
It could also cut short the terms of Councilmen Don Kennedy, Butch Twining and Chad Williams if the system is implemented by the end of this year.
“Consolidating the election will mean that three or four city council members will have their four-year terms cut in half,” Griffin wrote. “But this is a one time event and will not affect council members in future elections.”
In a Thursday statement, County Registrar Bob Page said he had not yet reviewed the court case but noted that he doesn’t currently have a way to run ranked-choice voting elections.
“The State-certified voting system used by the Registrar of Voters does not have a viable way to conduct ranked-choice voting elections,” Page wrote. “The voting system vendor has plans to add ranked-choice voting functionality to its software, which will then be reviewed and tested by the Secretary of State before it is certified.”
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org.
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