The City of San Luis Obispo is moving forward with a new way to elect city council members.
At a meeting Tuesday evening, the city council voted unanimously to implement a new voting method called Citywide Single Vote.
Under the current system, voters vote for two candidates and elect two candidates. With the new system, voters would vote for one candidate and the top two vote-getters would be elected.
The change was prompted after the city received a notice from a voter organization, the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project (SVREP), alleging a violation of the California Voting Rights Act. The notice claimed the current system dilutes minority votes, particularly Latino votes.
Originally, SVREP was pushing for a district voting system in which San Luis Obispo would be divided into five districts. Voters would then vote in every other election only for candidates within their own district.
The city retained an elections expert and demographer to study the city's demographics and evaluate whether districting would be effective.
As a result of the study, city officials determined that dividing the city into districts could actually reduce voter equity because of the "unique demographics and community connections in San Luis Obispo."
At Tuesday's meeting, demographer Marguerite Leoni explained that the city's Latino population is fairly well spread out across the city and would not form a significant portion of the population in any single district.
City officials also had concerns that districting could greatly reduce the pool of candidates and ultimately reduce the influence of the Latino community in city government.
City officials said that the proposed alternative, the Citywide Single Vote, would be less disruptive for voters, there would be no geographic barriers to selecting a voter's candidate of choice, and it would prevent the same majority from controlling all of the available seats.
After two years of negotiations with SVREP, and in order to settle the claim and avoid litigation, the city council agreed Tuesday to implement the Citywide Single Vote system for the 2026 and 2028 elections and then evaluate its effectiveness.
