Recommendation to request to receive and file a presentation from the City Clerk and City Attorney’s offices on Municipal Election dates for 2022 and beyond.
Thank you. And then with that, I have item number nine, please. There is a bit about four requests for items to be moved up before the study session. So to try to honor all the requests, I know various council members have asked for different ones, so I'm going to try to get through those as much as possible . Item nine Police. Communication Problem in Supernova Recommendation to receive and file a presentation from the city clerk and city attorney on municipal election dates for 2022 and beyond. Thank you. I think Katherine super. I know this is just a forwarding of a presentation that you have additional comments before we start. No, I can give you a just a little brief overview that this is an item that was to be vetted at the committee level. But the complexity of it and just in an effort, an efficiency effort, I realized that this presentation would have to be made to the entire council. It's that that many moving parts that it didn't make a lot of sense to go through what would be a normal vetting process at the committee. So I'd like to thank staff for putting the presentation together and I'll make the motion. Okay. We go ahead and have a presentation from staff, so let's go ahead and hear from Mr.. Mr. Parker. And I think Mr. Parker is going to give a city attorney overview and then we might have the clerk also have some comment . So. Thank you, Mayor. Members of the council, this is City Attorney Park and Amy Webber, deputy city attorney, will present for the city attorney's office. She's got a lot of work into this this item, and there are a lot of moving parts, as Councilmember Supernanny alluded to, Amy. Thank you. Charlie, this is Amy Webber from. The city attorney's. Office. Can you hear me? Yes. We can hear. You great mayor and members of the city council. The purpose of this item tonight is to bring forward options for the City Council to consider regarding municipal election dates. This issue has arisen because of a court case, Redondo Beach versus Padilla, which held that charter cities are not required to follow state election dates and has been made more complicated by the delay in the release of census data, which has affected the redistricting process. We have listed several options for you. In the memo, dated February nine, 2021, which was attached to the agenda. But as a practical matter, the option we recommend for the reasons set forth in the memo is to prepare a resolution to move the 2022 election dates to track the states. In addition, we recommend placing a measure on the 2022 ballot to make this change permanent for Long Beach voters, as this would be a change to the charter, the matter should be referred to the Charter Amendment Committee. Although the state of California and many other cities are in the same position as the city of Long Beach, currently the state has not yet passed legislation addressing this. So we don't have a date certain that we can identify for you and we'd have to report back on the precise date. These are the options as as outlined in the memo with pros and cons city clerk Lenny Villegas. They will provide some information regarding coordination with the County of Los Angeles on elections and on potential costs. So one, the first option is to retain the dates that are in our charter, which is an April primary and a June general election. These are the election dates that are specified in the charter and are familiar to many Long Beach voters. So they have that advantage. But the con on this is that for the 2022 elections, it would be physically impossible to have district lines drawn in time to comply with state and county deadlines. The County of Los Angeles has already informed the city clerk's office that it would be unable to conduct an April primary for us. So that option is is not a terribly practical one under our current circumstances. The second option would be to use current district boundaries for the 2022 election, and this is permitted in the charter that governs the Independent Redistricting Commission. However, we have been advised that any districts would have to be confirmed as meeting the requirements of the Voting Rights Act before they were used in an election. So it. And to do this would be likely to raise legal concerns, and for that reason is not recommended. We could follow the March primary election and November general election dates, which were the ones that were used in the most recent election statewide. These dates may also be familiar to voters as they were required by the state when we changed our election dates in 2017. And according to the clerk and the Los Angeles County Elections Division. Voter turnout increased on these dates as a result of the fact that they were statewide. The downside to this option, to this third option is that beginning in 22, 2022, the state primary may be changed to alternate a march primary with a June primary so that the state of California can take advantage of a prominent position in the presidential election years. So this may end up being confusing to people. And the final option, which is the one that we recommend, is the one where we have a June 2022 primary election date, if it's possible. And the caveat there is that if there are further delays in the distribution of census data, even a June date may not be possible. And we would have to wait to see what the state recommends or what kind of state legislation is in place to address the issue and then to follow it up with the general election date that is also identified by the state. And the further the piece of this one is to place an item on the ballot so that the voters of Long Beach can weigh in on the issue and determine what election dates they would prefer to have. And that is a change since it's charter change that would require a charter amendment and it would require an action on the ballot. And that would also. I'm sorry. So it would it would be required to be referred to the Charter Amendment Committee as well. So that is my presentation for you. If you have questions, I'm available to answer them, as well as the city clerk's office, who I think has had some information from Los Angeles County about their various initiatives regarding upcoming elections. Well, thanks. Thank you very much. We appreciate that. I had mentioned to the court today I wanted her to just kind of go over a couple data points that I'm going to ask you for now, which I think are really, really striking. The one thing that has been very clear and why even long before I was a member of this body, have always supported the consolidation of elections is because we know that when you align elections, you increase the turnout of your voting population and just as important, you within the spirit of the Voting Rights Act and the spirit of ensuring that communities that are typically disenfranchized at the ballot box, those numbers always, almost always increase every time. And I was asking the clerk, what were our kind of our pre when we didn't have aligned elections versus what happened to our turnout after we aligned them? Madam Court, can you can you share with us kind of the pre 2018 number for first for the primary to then the post a consolidation number on the primary that we just had? And then the general numbers for the council, please. Thank you, mayor and council members. So to compare apples to apples, I'm going to give you the numbers for the 2016 election, which is the most closely related to the 2020 election that just passed. So in our primary election in 2016, we had a 13.5% voter turnout in the city of Long Beach. In the primary for 2020, which was this past March, we had a 40.10% turnout for the city of Long Beach. So that is more than doubled our voter turnout in our primary election for the general election in 2016. We had a voter turnout of 40.12%. And in our general election, which is this past November, we had a 74.81% voter turnout. Again, this is a 34% jump in voter turnout from the general and 2016 to the general in 2020. If you want to look at the 2018 results, which were a nonpresidential election cycle for the primary, we had a 15.8% voter turnout. And for the general, we had a 28.73% voter turnout. Again, in 2020, we surpassed voter turnout by leaps and bounds in both the primary and the general. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. I think obviously from from a I mean, personally, this is to me, this is a civil rights issue. And just I'm so proud of what the council took, the steps it took for it to get us to this point. And I know you don't you may not have the data in front of you, Monique, but just as striking was when I had a chance to review the turnout numbers for our disenfranchized communities. When you look at like AAPI voters, black voters, Latino voters, voters that typically have had lower turnouts, the numbers all dramatically increase when we went to the consolidated elections. And so I think being able to have more folks in our city vote and increased turnout and increased turnout, by the way, for everyone was was really significant. I think you accounts I'm sure for not for the motion. I want to just reiterate, Charlie, I know you and I talked about what the motion would look like. So I want to just read what you and I discussed it to confirm that we're all on the same page. And that would be the resolution would move Lombard one which is municipal election dates to align with the state of California for 2022 and then also request the city attorney to prepare a ballot measure to be placed on the ballot in 2022 to permanently make this municipal election alignment. And that would be referred to the Charter Amendment Committee for a future date. So that would be the language that that would be in front of us council for super or not if you're. Well, first of all, its message to the attorney. Is that language correct? Is that capture what you needed? Mayor, you did capture what we needed. The motion, in essence, would ask us to prepare the resolution, and that would come back to the city council to establish and align our elections in 2022 to the state dates. And then the preparation of any proposed charter amendment would be referred to a charter meant to the Charter Amendment Committee , which is a committee of the whole of the Council for a future date, because there is time to discuss and continue that. So with that, you are correct, Mayor. Thank you. Now, I made sure that that was the recommended you know, I know that you had mentioned it, but I wanted to clarify. It's referred to for the record. So Councilman Super. I just want to just to confirm that's the motion through the city of the recommendation, correct? Correct. And I did have a couple of other questions that I well, just first of all, just a statement. So on on November four, just the con there, it says Holding an election in June, November could result in uneven campaigning cycle between 2020 and 2022 candidates. So I guess the statement I'd like to make there is we have an inherent. I want to say issue with the election cycles in that in one one election you have only four council districts up for grabs and the other you have five council districts plus four citywide candidates. So that's a conversation for a different day, probably if we ever want to try to fix that. I'm not sure how we go about just just saying that that that concept that it could be lead to uneven campaigning. Well, we have an inherent unevenness, I would say, on that. And the other point I'd just like to finalize with our city clerk, if Monique is still there, could you go over some of the items if in fact, we ever wanted to do a Long Beach City election again, besides not having the election equipment anymore, can can you kind of list some of those obstacles to doing that? Thank you, Councilmember Superhot. Yes. So we do not have the equipment. That is one aspect of not being able to have our own elections or run our own elections. We also don't have the space and the new city hall that we had in the previous city hall in order to increase our staff. During election cycles, we would increase our staff size by 20 to 30 people, depending on if it was a citywide election year or a non citywide election year. And so finding that space would be very expensive, I think, and we would have to find a location that would also be secure enough to follow Secretary of State requirements to House live ballots. That would be one of the things that would be challenging to figure out how we would staff all those people and keep them close enough to current staff to keep dual operations, legislative and election operations going. At the same time, we would also be competing with the county for poll workers and polling locations if we were to keep our traditional charter election dates of April and June. This is something called to vote Tuesday. And we've we've worked in the past with the county, and it's always challenging when we have an election on the same date as a county, when we're again competing for poll workers and polling locations. So there are some some things that I think would be very difficult and challenging for us going forward if we were to try and run our own elections again at this time. Okay. Thank you. That's all I have. Thank you. Second on the motion, I have Vice Mayor Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You know, if we just think back to the discussions around voter participation in years past. You know, there's always the conversation about why do we have such low voter turnout? And what we saw with the 74% turnout last last year during the consolidated elections. I think it's clear that Long Beach, as a large city, needs to be aligned with the state now. SB 415 is what triggered this effort. It was a voter participation bill, while other states are making it more difficult to participate in elections in California. This bill intention was to make it easier. Specifically, where you see a big disparity between low turnout on off cycle and high turnout during a consolidated elections in Long Beach fell into that category. We had such a wide difference that this qualify for SB 415. And so the idea here is just make it easier for people who are planning to vote to know when and where the election is because everything's on one ballot and it's just easier process for working people. So I'm happy to I'm happy to second this motion. Thank you, councilmember supervisor, for your your your your vision to bring this to the full council because it's a really important discussion. And I'm happy to support recommendation number four. Thank you. Council member, Austin. Thank you. I'll be supporting the recommendation. But I just want to get in a couple of comments from someone who has recently, you know, gone through a pretty long election with the consolidation with the state and having the county run our elections. So under as I understand it, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but under the resolution that's being proposed, this will basically ensure that all of our municipal elections moving forward will be administered by the county, as I understand it, and into two councilmember supernovas point. Yes, I do see that there is just a it's built into our charter and our system. There is an imbalance between on even numbers districts when it comes to elections. There's a lot more emphasis when there's citywide candidates. Of course the mayor's race that that affect the dynamics. I'm moving in this direction. I would just say that it will end it no matter what. It will change the dynamics of campaigns and elections in our city because the runoff period is much longer. This this last election cycle, a runoff period was literally eight months, which which is dramatically different from a two month election runoff cycle where we would have elections in April and runoffs in June. So eight months and like I said, changes, dynamics. It makes campaigns far more expensive. I would just just say for the council and anybody listening and understanding the realities of campaigns and elections, we may need to look at our campaign finance limits as well because of this this longer election period that will be required in moving in this decision. Now, I do support this decision because the the the voter turnout, it to me makes it worth it. You know, if there's a longer period of time for voters to get to know and understand candidates or clarify, you know, campaigns and understand what's really going on in their community, that that's a that's a added value. And if we can get more people to turn out to vote, it's worth it, in my opinion. And so for that, I'll be supporting it. But I do. I do so with caveats and in understanding that we may have to tweak other areas of our campaign finance and election processes. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Godfrey Ringa. Yeah. Just for clarification. So this is going to be a two step process. We're voting for now is like for. 2022. And then we'll. Have another discussion or maybe a ballot. Measure that will go for. How to handle the 2024. Election, which. Would be a a presidential. Election or maybe a march November election. Yeah. And it would be 20, 24 and beyond. Actually the ballot measure would would link up or kind of permanently in the charter. Is the the. Would it. Be. Possible maybe to avoid being somewhat pigeonholed into a into significant dates that maybe could have a broader language that would say that we would just be aligned with with county elections because of our inability to step up and handle the elections internally within the city. They're throwing it out there. I mean, Mr.. Mr. Parkin or Monique can answer, but the county elections are they follow the state. It's the same it's the same thing, I believe. All right. That that's correct. And I totally support the fact that, you know, we need to increase voter turnout. And if the proof is in the pudding. We're having a lot of it. Councilmember. This is Attorney Park and that to answer your question, yes, it is a two step process that we would be coming back to. If this motion is successful, a resolution will be coming back to you to align the 22 2022 election specifically. And then the bigger issue would come to the Charter Amendment Committee for discussion. Thank you. Next. Next up I have is Councilman Price. Mr. Mayor. Just so I have clarity, the motion on the floor is for item number or the proposal number four. Is that correct? Yes, that's correct. Item number four. Okay. Thank you very much. And then I just have a question. Do we have any idea how other cities are approaching their elections when they are not aligned with the state? Is everyone kind of going in this direction because the census data has been delayed and they continue to be delayed and impact redistricting in the region for other cities? Is that information we even have? I can tell up first. I'm sorry. This is Amy Webber. Councilwoman Pryce. I was just going to say that we do have some information from our redistricting consultants that this has become a statewide issue because of the because of the delay in the release of the census data. And that's the reason that we're recommending this option. We actually expect that the state will take some action to address this, since most of the other cities in the state are in the same position that we are. I'm sorry, Monique. Now over to you. Thank you. Councilwoman Pryce, I can tell you that most cities have already changed their election dates to align with the county due to as 415. We are one of the few cities that did not have a charter city that did not do a charter amendment and we did an ordinance. So most cities are a little bit ahead of us in that they've already addressed the issue with their charter. There are some cities out there that are general law cities and they are already consolidated with the county, so they did not have to make that change. I do have a representative from the county on the meeting, Mr. Jeff Klein. If we have any specific questions for the county, he might be able to address those for us. Jeff, is there anything you'd like to to say on this topic? No, I think it's been covered pretty thoroughly. But if anyone does have specific questions, we are happy to answer. Okay. Thank you. I don't think I have any specific questions on that, but can I just get a little bit more explanation and clarity on the con of the holding? The elections in June? November could result in uneven campaigning cycle between 2020 and 2022 candidates I know been super not asked about that, but is that limited to only 2020 and 2022? Or are we going to have an even campaign cycles every two years as a result? So I. Always only read. This. This is city attorney parking. I think the answer and someone may have just said it, it will always be uneven as to the months if the state maintains their current cycle in which in the presidential election year they have the primary in March and the general in November and then in gubernatorial elections they have the primary in June and the general election in November. So you would always have that timing, which would be different for the even council districts versus the odd council districts. And as Councilmember Sabrina mentioned, the citywide are in the gubernatorial years. Okay. And so that difference would be two months. Basically. Yes. Made three months, April through March versus June. Right. Two months. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Allen. Thank you, Mayor. I will definitely be supporting this. Just going through a recent election, it might be way harder on the candidate, but it's way easier for the voter. And that's why it's worth it. And I think it's just. Important. That we keep our elections aligned with the state. A voter. Participation or turnout at 75%. Is just incredible, and that speaks for itself. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Sara, please. Thank you, Mayor. I support the the option number four and similar. I think building off of my colleague here council member Austin comment about the gap between March and November. The primary of 2020 to November was long. It was also unprecedented because between the primary and the general was the pandemic as well. So I'm not quite sure what it would normally be like anyways, but I do know that decreasing the gap between primary and general from eight months to six months I think will help people in general. Remember that there's going to be another election in November. So I think, you know, it's also helpful for the candidate and I think for the public as well. And I think the other concern I have is just ongoing confusion for voters around when election dates are. But I think that it's in general confusing anyway because of what happened with the pandemic. But I thought that there was a lot of education done by county and the city to ensure that people knew about the election and that at least the county is running it. And I feel that this would just go on to what was done back in 2020. So I think it's always going to be education. And I'm just, you know, impressed that we had such a high voter turnout in 2020 and the general election because it was also during the pandemic as well. So I can't imagine how much higher would even be if people are able to even vote also in person. So I really support it in the sense that it really the alignment really helps with voter turnout and engagement, especially people who do not generally vote. So those are kind of my thoughts. And I think that, you know, regardless of, you know, I think the alignment always helps in just pulling our resources around education stuff. Thanks again. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilwoman. Mongo. I want to echo the comments specifically of councilman sorrow and Councilman Allen. I do think there was a lot of confusion, and I think this year was very unique. I have heard and again, I don't have my Ph.D. and I was not in the class that did the study, but I had heard that the biggest correlation and sorry that there is a correlation between. The state elections and local election turn out. But that that is not the causation, that the actual causation is something that Councilmember Austin so poignantly mentioned, which is are campaign funding issues. Some of the reasons that more people turn out at the statewide is because there's more people that are out there campaigning, connecting with people. And when they're doing that, obviously through mailers and all those things, more people are connected and aware. And I think that that's a very interesting alignment. I remember when I had originally heard this, it was more than a year ago, I want to say it was two or three years ago because at the time I was undergoing an election and. While technically there were opponents two, one, three and nine, really, they didn't have campaigns. They didn't have candidates that were funded. Like Councilmember Aranda and I and my district in a march, June election cycle and I don't know Councilmember Odinga's numbers, we were at voter turnout over 40%. But why was that? It was because we had five candidates that were all heavily funded. There was a lot of PAC money coming into the city because there were a lot less contested races, there was a lot more money spent in a lot smaller area. And so potentially that could have been the actual causation. When we talk about what's the future of our city wide offices, I would love to see some way worked into the city charter change that. We move two of our citywide elections on to the even cycle so that it gives additional interest in the even districts. So if we currently have four citywide elected city attorneys, city prosecutor, city auditor and mayor, pick two of them and put them on even put two of them, put them on on. And then now you're you're really even in that playing field and you're bringing in additional interest at the citywide level. In the past, we did not do that because from what I had heard and maybe Councilmember Super and I can comment on this because he seems to be the council historian, it had to do with costs in the even years we only ran precincts in those districts that were even and the rest of the city didn't even necessarily know there was an election. And so it was a cost saving measure. But if we are going to align with the state, there's some significant value in potentially moving those over. I would also say that I find significant value. I've had always contested races. I find considerable value in a good, hotly contested race. I think it's great for the constituents to know and understand what's been done. I think that it's great for candidates to get out there and tell their story. I think that an eight month period between I does two things. It does probably reduce advantages of incumbents because there's more time for the new candidate to get their name out there. But it also creates voter fatigue. I mean, the number of people who get really frustrated and overwhelmed with the amount of campaign materials can be overwhelming . And so I've heard a lot of that. The other concern I have, and this is something that I was uniquely able to participate in the county wide voter system testing is the same complaint that anyone who tested it had done and it was on the wall as a viable, valid complaint. That is the same complaint I've heard from so many people who participated in this election that you are so far down ballot. Sometimes by the time you're getting to your local city elections, there's no mixing up of the races on the electronic system, which is a possibility within the programing. But you could potentially have to vote on 25 things before you get to your local city council race and then that they within the state guidelines currently they draw letters of the alphabet in order and candidates are listed in the order that their letter of the alphabet was in the order. And so now with this countywide system, the first three candidates are on the first page. But if you're one of those other candidates, you have to put first next to go to the next page, which we did not have that disadvantage when we ran our own elections, when we ran on elections. All the candidates were right there, clear as crystal. There were many people that I had heard in this race who had gone to the voting place and called me and said, I didn't see so-and-so on the ballot, so I voted for so-and-so. And I'm like, you had to push next to go to the next page because there were multiple candidates. And those are some concerns that I have that I hope that now that all of this is coming to the forefront, I know many of my colleagues on the council have a lot of dialog with people who are making these decisions at the state level. I hope that some of these things are discussed and I hope that at this time we really do address campaign finance. I see the value of what the residents said, which is they wanted the amount of money in campaigns to be lower and therefore we had low campaign contribution limits. But the issue is that on both sides, it doesn't matter what your political belief system is. Outside money is easier to be raised because they don't have those same limits. And so therefore, what I saw in this last election is a ton of independent expenditures really making significant influence on our local city council races. I think I read multiple times in the paper that there were candidates where large quantities of their money were from outside the city and from big dollar amounts. And I don't know that that's what Long Beach residents want. I think Long Beach residents really want. The local person who they know and understand, knows their issues and is here to listen and thoughtfully provide input to be able to really. Make the changes to the status quo that they feel are necessary to to live in a vibrant city like we do here in Long Beach. And I know that each of us have and gone through that process, and it is a daunting one. But for newcomers to not have an infrastructure and be viable is really difficult with the the influence that money has on elections all over the country. So I'll be supporting the item on the floor tonight. But I think it's it's it's a step in the right direction. I think there's a lot more steps that need to take place. And I would. Councilman, your 5 minutes. So you think. I'd like to thank Daryl. Thank you. Good idea. Thank you. I got councilman's in house. Thank you. I just wanted to say how supportive I am of this item. I think it's going to be great for our voters, especially in the in the communities where we see the least amount of voters. And I live in a district where we don't have a big voter turnout. So aligning with the state really does make sense so we can get as many voters out there as possible. I do share some of the concerns that have been raised here today through my colleagues and I, and I'm hopeful that we can be able to address them as we move forward. So thank you. Thank you, Councilman Austin. Thank you. I just wanted to follow up on my point related to the a very long runoff period. Right. Election, though, that the other part of that is that, you know, at some point, a challenger may may win an election in March. Right. They're going to have to wait eight months to take office. And that's a dynamic that I just couldn't imagine. A lot can happen in an eight month period. And then the second thing that I want us to think about also is maybe the clerk can give some clarification on this is our current matching funds process. Right. And most people don't accept that matching funds and don't utilize it. But we do have a provision in our our to our our election process that allows for it. But it was set up on the two month run off period. Right. And so you can get matching funds for a primary, but the general is actually much less because it is factored in for a much smaller period. And so when I talk about, you know, us addressing other aspects that may not have been thought about, that is one area that we are definitely going to have to address . Should we we support this this motion. We're going to have to make provisions in our matching funds process that allow for individuals that don't necessarily have, you know, the ability to raise a lot, lots of money. The intent for matching funds is to allow individuals who don't have a lot of money to participate in the process. And so these are these are factors that we are going to have to build in to everything that we are we're discussing here. In an ideal world, I will just tell you, I would prefer to have a set June and November election cycle so that we can we can we can base it off that the March primary is is a little difficult and. And perhaps I would like to to consult with L.A. County just to see if June elections are happening in any way. And if we could tag in to that, that would make a lot of sense as well. And it's because of the other factors that I'm bringing up. And again, I do like Councilmember Munoz. Thought to potentially look at, you know, adding a couple of the citywide charter elections positions to to the even number election cycle that would balance things out and make for more robust participation, in my opinion. So I just wanted to get those points out because. Thank you, Councilman. Councilman Price. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to follow up on Councilwoman Mondo's comments regarding finance reform. Is that is it possible? And perhaps I can offer this is a friendly to ask city staff, and I assume it would be the city attorney's office to come back with a report that covers what our current campaign financing structure is and what options we might have in terms of campaign contribution limits, limitations on outside money and things of that nature. Just an educational piece in terms of what's even possible for a legislative body to consider in the area of campaign reform, for those for those of us who may not be plugged into it from prior employment in the political arena. Just an educational report. Councilmember Price We could certainly prepare a memo for for the council on the on those issues, one of which is the campaign contribution limits, which is which was established by the voters. And so that would also require a voter initiative. And we can cover that in the memo for you. Absolutely. Yeah, I would. It just. I'm just looking for some education and a better understanding of the issue, because this is all very other than me running for office in 2014. I don't have any personal experience with any of this, and I'd love to learn a little bit more about it. Thank you. Is that a that's a friendly amendment. I'm not sure if Councilman Superdog accepts that. Yes, that friendly is accepted. And if I'm okay. Espino Mayor Garcia in Agua. Absolutely. Okay. So first, you know, thanks for all the great comments from everyone on council. I think this kind of proves the point that this was the right venue to bring this item to because the comments have been very productive. I would in particular like to acknowledge Councilman Austin's comments, probably because I made the same comments a few years ago when this idea came here. I'm coming from the side that it is a tough thing to deal with these on runoffs. I think a couple of years ago, I made the statement that council was I was in a six week runoff one time, and one reporter described myself and my challenger as up to two heavyweight prizefighters in the 12th round. I mean, it took a toll on us just during that six weeks, not to mention the toll that it takes on on the voters that Councilman Mongo mentioned in voter fatigue on these issues. So I approach this issue on that basis as zero. Is there a way to keep this old system we have? And I think what's been shown here tonight is that we have the increased voter turnout. Turnout. We have the increased. Well, just I'll just say that just the practical nature of things that we probably don't have a practical way to approach this. But I just wanted to acknowledge Councilman Austin. For bringing up the point. And Councilwoman Price. Yeah, let's let's do this. I probably should should bring this back to our committee, the elections committee, so we can look at all these things there. But I think, Mr. Parkin, you said this this would come back to council as as part of the package. Councilmember the as I understand the motion, if approved this evening, a resolution would come back to the City Council for approval establishing the election dates for the 2022 election to align with the state. And then at a future date to be determined the A we would draft a for your consideration a proposal for a ballot initiative for for the 2022 election to establish the election dates on a go forward basis consistent with a for our charter, which would amend our charter and we could before that comes back, obviously we would get a memo separate to the council as requested by Councilmember Price and accepted as a friendly. OC with the overall goal of mitigating this issue of these long runoff elections. We could certainly look at that. I think that the right now we are dependent on the state election dates and that cycle of the different long runoff cycle on the presidential elections is has been a matter of the state concern. And so if we follow the state, it would still be a long election cycle for presidential and then the June November for gubernatorial. We will certainly talk to the county. Would be I wasn't speaking of the dates to set the fact that we have these dates. What is the best way to deal with that? And the starting point is campaign finance. Absolutely. And we heard from council member Austin loud and clear on those issues. And I think we'll address those in the memo on what the options for the council would be. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I got two more folks cued up and then we'll we'll go to the vote, Councilman Mongo and then Vice Mayor Richardson. Thank you. So I was listening to that. But and I'm the only one where the city attorney's microphone is very, very muffled. So am I understanding that. We are currently moving to the state, but the city attorney is bringing back information on the possibility that since the county runs many June elections, that they're also going to bring back data related to potentially doing June, November 2022. For 2022, we are going to bring back a resolution that aligns with the states election cycle, which may change with state legislation because of the delay of the census data. So we're not bringing back fixed dates at this time or in the resolution. It'll be to align with whatever the state determines their primary and general election will be for 2022. The ballot initiative could come back with various options for the Council to consider. And did I hear that? The data from the census won't be back in time for March, but if we were to have the election in June, we potentially could have the correct lines. The hope is we could have a June election if we receive the census data in time and the redistricting commission finishes their process in time to have it in place for 180 days prior to the June election. But that's where we're thinking we may receive state legislation changing those dates to make sure that there's sufficient time to hold the election. Okay. Wonderful. To add to Susie's friendly, I'll just make a comment that to really understand the context of whatever recommendation the city attorney brings back related to campaign finance, and it might be valuable to also bring back the correlating data related to spending in each of the elections. Say for a five year or ten year, probably a ten year period, to be able to correlate multiple years and be able to see here's how much money generally was spent. The election. I'm not saying here as much money was spent on behalf of one candidate versus another. But here's that number, because when you look at the total amount spent and you'd correlate that to voter turnout, and it's it's pretty striking. And I would be interested to see if it aligns with language the way that it was presented on the national level and then how we as a city could improve that to our own benefit of getting more voters right. We always want the most voters. We'd love to take money out of elections, but it doesn't seem like that's happening any time soon. So I'm open to any suggestions that this benefits the voters. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. I had another customer queue up again. Let's try to hopefully wrap this up soon. Vice Mayor Richardson and then councilman's in the house and then we'll go with the governor. Right. Thank you. So just just a few comments. So by aligning with the state, the amount of voters quadruple doubles quadruples. Our limits are very low. The amount of money it would take to communicate with more voters would mean without addressing campaign finance reform, essentially, it makes our campaigns more dependent on outside spending, independent expenditure campaigns. And those typically have there's no control that a candidate has over these campaigns. A lot of times it's divisive. A lot of times the facts aren't correct. And if some of the worst types of campaign we have to if we're going to look at campaign finance reform, we have to also look at public financing campaigns. That's something we have to look at as a big city and major cities are looking at not just matching, but actual public finance campaign. We should look at as a part of those options because what it does is limit the dependency on outside spending and allows the candidate to demonstrate more respect over the nature of the topics and more command over it. It allows them to have a level playing field in how in how they they campaign. Some cities are doing this also by looking at a public engagement element in their general plan that specifically speaks to voters saying election requirements, election laws, all of those sort of being a part of a vision document for the city that has come up in the past. And perhaps this is something when we get to the charter committee as a whole, we think about what that measure may look like. It may be election, maybe more comprehensive around public engagement, all of those things. So just some food for thought for the council to think about. But in general, I think the comments Councilman Austin made about the campaign finance were right on. I think Councilman Mungo's comments typically about how the city guides a Prius are going to be apples to apples now. I think splitting the city wide, that's something you got to look at. And so these are also all very good, very good items. But I think the purpose here, we need to just remember that it's about making it easier for people to get access, to make it make decisions, engaging their government and, you know. Turn out makers and turn out takers. Unfortunately, city council races are not turnout makers. The school board races are not real turnout because the turnout makers are city wide elections or gubernatorial elections. Your your your presidential elections. So aligning with the state does have benefits. But there isn't a president on every ballot. Right. There is an open governor's seat, every ballot. So I think mix it up some of the citywide. It isn't a terrible idea. Okay. Thank you. Customers in Dallas. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to say that I also had a lot of questions about the financing for for the elections back when I started, because as you all my record, I ran in a special election. And in those special elections, the finance contribution was bigger. And so I knew that it would be definitely hard to to to run on a smaller or smaller finances limit. But I one of the things that I did do as a as the chair of the Elections Oversight Committee is that I also wanted information, just and educational information on what it was that needed to be done to to look into the possibility of increasing the limits of of the finance contributions. And as my colleagues on that committee might recall, we did get information back, which was that it would have to go to the voters. So I think we're all in this on the same wavelength right now. So I you know, that's something that a lot of other cities are doing. But I'm I'm happy that this is that we're supporting this item moving forward. And I, like everyone here on the council, has said aligning the elections, I hope, is going to bring a lot more turnout, voter turnout to, ah, not only either state or citywide, I should say, not only our citywide elections, but our district elections as well. Thank you. And before we go to a vote, I just want to just add one thing I think has been mentioned. This is a great discussion, by the way. I think the one thing that keeps coming up so that it's interesting is California. Of course, the reason why there's those different dates is because California wants to have a bigger they move their primary are dependent on the presidential to influence that primary process. And so there's right now a conversation in the state legislature about not doing that by just picking one date and keeping it know, keeping it the same every other year so that there isn't the, you know, the back and forth. So we'll see where that conversation goes and it may impact our conversations here in the future as well. Madam Clerk, please go and call the vote. District one if. A district to. I District three. I think. District four. All right. District five. I. District six. I'm District seven. I District eight. I. District nine. Yes. Motion carries. Thank you. Next up is item 16.