Today, Superior Court Judge Thomas Kuhnle ruled that Santa Clara will be subdivided into six electoral districts for the November 2018 election. It is anticipated that the City will appeal the judge’s order, possibly putting the current at-large election system back in play this November.
The changes set forth by the ruling require the Santa Clara County Register of Voters to create a new district -based electoral map before the candidate filing deadline on August 10th*, a virtually impossible task. Because of the uncertainty surrounding whether November’s election will be district-based or at-large, no candidates except Mayor Lisa Gillmor, whose position is a city-wide seat, are confirmed to be running for Council.
Last year, the Asian Law Alliance sued Santa Clara on the grounds that the at-large voting system did not allow for minority groups to be represented on the Council. As a result, the City of Santa Clara went through the process of developing a map to redesign the election districts, producing a design with two districts, multiple council seats within each of those two districts and ranked choice voting. This proposal was put on the June ballot as Measure A, but did not pass.
*Date can be extended by three days if no incumbent files.
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