Episode 012... SB City Elections: Looking Back, Looking Ahead

Santa Barbara City Elections: Looking Back, Looking Ahead
Through a chat to the camera at the in-house Bamboo Studio, in this episode Cathy and David analyze the Santa Barbara City election held a month prior (06Nov.2007). David reports on the past 13 years of voter turnout in Santa Barbara, with a quantitative analysis posted at a separate website.

Short answer: based upon the past 13 years of data for Santa Barbara city elections, voter turnout during odd-year November elections continues to be low, now an average of 40.5% turnout rate compared with an average of 66.8% turnout during even-year elections. For the long answer, see this prior report as Edhat Local News. Turnout in 2007 was 37.1%, the lowest since 2001.

During this deconstructive discussion of the Nov. 2007 City election, OLPA co-host Cathy Murillo also looks back at the unsuccessful outcome of Measure A-2007 on that City ballot, and she speculates why some voters did and did not support it. She then calls out and challenges the recent advocates for district elections for Santa Barbara City Council, considering that such district elections were touted as a better systemic change to increase voter turnout instead of shifting the election cycle year, as Measure A-2007 would have done.

And to pile on, Murillo then seriously questions how politically groovy and progressive the Santa Barbara Independent really is in its editorial positions. She cites several highly un-groovy and politically backwards editorial positions by the Independent during the past few years.

Santa Barbara Clean Elections Working Group is planning to sponsor a public forum in mid to late February 2008 about various options that could increase voter turnout, such as a potential mandatory vote-by-mail system that would be as if the entire election were all by permanent absentee ballots with no actual election "day". Naturally, that forum in February 2008 will be the subject of a future OLPA episode.

As Cathy describes in this OLPA video episode (no. 012) she produced and edited, the advocates of district elections for City Council will be invited to present their best arguments during this forum, especially focused on how voting by districts (each potentially 1/6th of the City) supposedly would increase voter turnout. So far, we neither found nor heard of any evidence that voter turnout increases with district elections. The list of credible advantages and disadvantages is long, for and against this perpetual proposal.

The last part of this OLPA video episode features a public forum about "clean elections" and municipal election finance reform, held in Santa Maria on 17 Nov. 2007 and sponsored by SBCAN, League of Women Voters of Santa Maria Valley, Santa Maria Valley Democratic Club, and other civic groups. Speakers included San Luis Obispo City Councilmember Christine Mulholland, San Luis Obispo City Clerk Audrey Hooper, and Susan Lerner of California Clean Money Campaign, all ably moderated by Vibiana Saavedra from Santa Maria. Saavedra continues to be one of our favorite interview subjects, now featured in her second OLPA episode after Plaza del PUEBLO.

This forum served as a taste for options that Santa Barbara City Council could consider from the San Luis Obispo examples, where their ordinance from 1974 successfully has limited City election contributions to $200 from each individual, corporation, or organization. As a result, the price to run a City Council campaign in San Luis Obispo has been fairly attainable for regular folks not beholden to special interest money.

A future OLPA episode will feature longer excerpts from this same forum, with more details about municipal election reform options that could apply to Santa Barbara, based upon examples of municipal ordinances from San Luis Obispo and San Buenaventura.

This episode debuted on TV-17 in the predawn timeslot on 05 December 2007, and it replayed until 19 December.

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