In Tuesday’s election, San Luis Obispo residents used a new voting method meant to give Latinos more of a say in choosing their city council members, but it will likely take months before the results can be evaluated.
Voters only had the option to select one candidate to serve on the San Luis Obispo City Council this election cycle, even though there were two available seats.
That system, called citywide single vote, is the result of a settlement with the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, a Latino voting rights group.
They argued that San Luis Obispo’s old system of electing at-large candidates to serve on the council diluted Latino voting power, violating the California Voting Rights Act.
According to attorney Kevin Shenkman, who represented Southwest Voter in their suit against the city, the new system gives candidates preferred by underrepresented groups more of a chance of winning.
“In this most recent election with two seats up, if a candidate gets one-third of the votes, they are guaranteed to win,” Shenkman told KCBX. “That candidate doesn't need 51%, as they would in the old system.”
Shenkman says that in the coming months, as more data is published, Southwest Voter will look at precinct data from this election cycle to see which candidate was preferred by Latino voters, and how that candidate fared.
[ IMAGE: IMG_5269-2.jpeg Volunteers collecting ballots at a drop-off station in front of the County Government Center in downtown San Luis Obispo. Credit: Bunker King ]
“The question is, was the citywide single vote system effective at combating the vote dilution of the Latino community in San Luis Obispo?” he said. “If it was? Great, then we keep doing that.”
If not, Shenkman says they’ll evaluate if that candidate would have won under a different system, like by dividing the city into districts.
San Luis Obispo discussed switching to a districts-based system during negotiations with Southwest Voter, but pushed instead for a citywide single vote.
“District elections can be effective at improving minority representation in some cities, but SLO’s demographics do not show clear benefits,” Mayor Erica A. Stewart wrote in an op-ed for the San Luis Obispo Tribune, arguing that minority communities are too “dispersed.”
The city of San Luis Obispo will also evaluate the effect of the citywide single vote in the 2026 and 2028 council elections.
“We won't be evaluating it holistically until after the second election cycle finishes,” said Council Member Emily Francis. “That'll be done collectively with the entire council and we'll bring in experts, since none of us are experts in election demographics.”
Francis is one of two incumbent candidates who ran in Tuesday’s election. She currently has more than 35% of the vote, according to early results.
When asked how she’ll serve the interests of Latino voters, Francis mentioned providing city communications in residents’ preferred languages, and increasing access to public meetings by hosting them “ in the neighborhoods where those projects are occurring.”
“Serving every single person in this city is my goal as a city council member,” Francis said. “But we do have a lot of work to do to make sure that everybody feels welcome in this community, and that includes making sure that communication is happening where people are.”
