“Feeling All Split Up”

The City of Santa Monica could change up how its politicians are elected.

The concept of gerrymandering is usually seen as a national issue with the many contentious  states’ districts. However, California has employed an independent redistricting committee for its Congressional, State Senate, and State Assembly districts. In 2022, people’s lulling into a sense that California is free from gerrymandering was broken when there was the leaked audio of the 2022 Los Angeles City Council Scandal. As the tapes circulated through countless media sources, international awareness was spread that Los Angeles was corrupt in their redistricting efforts. 

Although California has an independent redistricting committee, Los Angeles has not risen to the occasion. As talk of the Audio Leak has died down, the racism is remembered but the stains on the political structure has been forgotten.

While in Los Angeles City, there are districts for the City Council and School Board, this is not the case for Santa Monica and many other California cities.

In districts, a city is split into regions where one candidate is elected by one constituency. In at-large elections, the entire city votes for many candidates for a position.

The tides have been shifting away from the at-large elections since the 2001 California Voters Rights Act – a more extensive version of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – and its provision that minorities can sue their cities for a lack of representation in elected offices in order to force districts in the California cities’ city councils.

Latinos in the Pico Neighborhood used the 2001 CVRA to sue the City of Santa Monica for vote dilution. The lawsuit was filed in April of 2016 and is still unresolved. 

“I am against moving to district elections. If you and your representative do not see eye to eye then – oh well…too bad – whereas I had many people from various parts of the city who I would not represent if we went to district elections come to me and say that….I know that we agree on this issue so can I work with you on this…” says attorney and Santa Monica Councilmember Gleam Davis.

“I am against moving to district elections,” says Santa Monica Councilmember Gleam Davis.

“If every city council member is responsible to every corner of the city and no specific council/school board member is responsible to any specific area, then there is no direct accountability or responsibility. Who do I go to with my neighborhood’s issues? Take your pick of council/school board members,” says Miles Warner, a failed 2022 Santa Monica School Board candidate.

“Who do I go to with my neighborhood’s issues?” says failed 2022 Santa Monica School Board Candidate Miles Warner.

“From the President right down to your local HOA board, folks in power will construe the facts to support why they should remain in power. And that is what we are seeing in Santa Monica; folks who claim to be progressive, opposing by-district voting and the California Voters Rights Act (CVRA) because it threatens their continuance of power,” Warner said. 

Watsonville in 1985 and Costa Mesa in 2018 were able to finally elect Latinx members of their respective city councils. 

“The 2001 CVRA is meant to give minorities and the marginalized representation, specifically if they have a majority within a geographic segment, but are a minority in the overall municipality. A good example of this is the city of Escondido, which is roughly 49% Latino and yet had only had two Latino city council members in 125 years,” Warner said. 

“Santa Monica is a relatively small city demographically. We’re 8.2 square miles and divvying up the city will lead to balkanization. I was adopted at birth but my birth father was Latino. Let’s put myself aside for a bit – we still have three Latinos on the City Council: Councilmember de la Torre, Vice Mayor Negrete, and Councilmember Parra,” Davis said.

“In the City of Los Angeles, there are a lot of behind the scenes deal making that goes on. Everything is more transparent as everybody has to care about what is going on in the city. There are backroom dealing in communities that have districts. Districting has led to more representation from historically marginalized communities and that’s a really good thing. In about 50% of the cases here in California, it hasn’t really changed the level of minority representation at all,” Davis said.

“It should be very clear to everyone by now that those in power support the status quo and want nothing to change. They support the at-large election system… at-large elections [have been] used as a tool to marginalize voters of color throughout the country, and this also true for the city of Santa Monica,” de la Torre said.  

“It should be very clear to everyone by now that those in power support the status quo and want nothing to change,” says Santa Monica Councilmember Oscar de la Torre.

Those in the pro-districts camp cite the failed Santa Monica-Malibu School Board campaign of Ana M. Jara in 2004. Jara is a Latina and says that she had near unanimous support from the Latinx community in Santa Monica and Malibu.

Afterwards, 11 Latinx candidates ran for the School Board from 2006 to 2022 and they all won.

The legal battle over the Santa Monica districting fiasco is insane because The Court of Appeal concluded that the plaintiffs failed to prove unlawful vote dilution. The Court of Appeal and the California Supreme Court disagreed on whether or not the fact that Santa Monica has at-large elections abides by the California Voting Rights Act. The California Supreme Court stated that– in order for at-large districts to stand– they must prove that minorities would be just as well off under the at-large elections and the current districting situation.

“There is no way to form a majority minority district in Santa Monica. Latinos are around 13% of the voting population and Blacks are about 6%. They are spread throughout the community. More than 50% of the Latinos live outside of the Pico Neighborhood,” Davis said.

“I think if we were to go to district elections, it would be highly unlikely that we would have more than one Latina or Latino on the City Council because of how the districts would have to be constructed. There was a time when there were three residents of the Pico Neighborhood on the Council and it is only one seventh of the city. One of the things that the Supreme Court said when it sent the case back down to the Appellate Court was that a factor to consider was to not make the situation of perceived Latinx and Pico Neighborhood voter dilution worse,” Davis said. 

“If you want to create Latino or Black or Asian power, a different system like rank choice voting would allow for them regardless of where they live in the city to coalesce their votes into a formidable bloc that offers a better opportunity for historically marginalized groups to be on the council.”