Claremont study: District-based elections increasing across state

Downey is one of several cities switching to district-based elections. (City of Downey photo)

CLAREMONT — Southern California cities are increasingly shifting from at-large to district-based city council election systems, according to a report released Tuesday by Claremont McKenna College.

The report shows how the shift has been driven by the California Voting Rights Act of 2002, which was designed to empower Latinos and other minority groups to challenge at-large election systems that may dilute their voting strength.

A district-based election system is one in which the city is divided into geographic districts where voters in each district select one council member who resides in that district to represent them. An at-large election is one that represents an entire jurisdiction -- like a city or town -- and gets voted on by everyone in that city or town. In other words, the candidates who get the most votes from the entire city win in an at-large election.

Over the past two decades, a majority of Southern California cities have converted from at-large to by-district electoral systems. Among the 20 most populous cities in Southern California, only Lancaster continues to use at- large elections, the study found.

Prior to adoption of the CVRA, only 29 cities in the state used district-based elections, while now 216 of California's 483 incorporated cities do, according to the report by the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna.

The CVRA has sparked legal challenges that have prompted cities to adopt district-based election systems. Some cities have been forced to make the change after losing lawsuits, while many others have preemptively switched to avoid litigation. Notably, no city has ever won a CVRA lawsuit, the report says.

The trend toward district-based elections has accelerated, with the number of California cities adopting district elections nearly quadrupling between 2016 and 2024.

"It took some time for the CVRA to kick in, but it has now fundamentally changed local elections in California as nearly half the cities in the state have adopted district-based systems," Rose Institute Director Ken Miller said in a statement.

Since 2000, Santa Ana and Alhambra voters approved a switch to by- district elections for all city council members in 2018 and 2020, respectively, while Newport Beach continues to use a from-district election system, according to researchers.

As of November 2024, the city of Downey is transitioning its hybrid election system to a by-district system, citing compliance with the CVRA as the impetus for the transition, with a goal to complete the switch by 2028, the Rose Institute stated.