Due to the passage of a state law that requires local elections to be held on the same dates as state elections if voter turnout for local elections has been historically lower, Manhattan Beach will have to change the date of its elections, which now fall in March of an odd-numbered year.
The City Council Tuesday night debated when the new election date should fall and ultimately decided to hold a public hearing on the issue on July 19.
The change means that some members’ terms may be shortened or lengthened, depending on whether a June or November date of an even-numbered year is chosen. As such, the councilmembers decided they would seek guidance from the residents.
“I’m not willing to do that tonight because I want input from the public,” said Councilmember Amy Howorth, after learning that her term could potentially be extended. “I feel it would be wrong to do it in one meeting like this.”
The council emphasized that the change was being forced by the state. The California Voter Participation Rights Act, passed in September 2015, requires municipalities to change their election date if the turnout for such an election is 25 percent or more less than the average turnout for the past four state elections.
City Clerk Liza Tamura said that Manhattan Beach’s turnout, which was 19.4 percent in the March 2015 election, fell below the threshold.
Councilmember Mark Burton was in favor of making the change as soon as possible.
“I wouldn’t mind a November election of this year,” he said. “The sooner we get to an even-year election cycle, the more robust the turnout, the better.”
Councilmember Wayne Powell said that he’d interviewed State Senator Ben Allen on his radio show Powell to the People, and the senator explained that the idea behind the state legislation was to increase voter turnout.
It wasn’t clear why the city had chosen to have its elections in an off-year, although Mayor Pro Tem David Lesser said he thought it might have been “to give focus to city elections apart from state and federal elections.”
Powell suggested that the policy might have “favored incumbents” by keeping voter turnout low.
Staff also gave the option of waiting to see if the state law is modified, since it doesn’t go into effect until January 1, 2018.
However, staff also noted that the city could be exposed to litigation if it didn’t take action and no change was made to the law. ER
