Palm Springs to hold public forum about district elections tonight
The first in a series of public meetings this week regarding Palm Springs’ switch from at-large to district elections will be held tonight.
Residents from Central Palm Springs can weigh in at 6 p.m. at the Palm Springs Convention Center during a forum hosted by city councilmembers Geoff Kors and Lisa Middleton, who make up the council’s subcommittee on the districting process.
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A meeting for North Palm Springs residents will be held Tuesday at the James O. Jessie Desert Highland Unity Center, while South Palm Springs residents were invited for a Thursday evening meeting at the Demuth Community Center.
Each meeting will include a presentation highlighting the results of a demographic analysis of the city’s voting patterns by ethnicity and geography.
The move to district elections comes after a voting rights group threatened litigation against the city earlier this year, alleging that Palm Springs is violating the California Voting Rights Act by conducting at-large elections.
A letter from the nonprofit Southwest Voter Registration Education Project claimed that at-large elections “diminished the ability of Latino residents to impact elections and has resulted in racially polarized voting.”
Though city officials denied the nonprofit’s claims, they noted that municipalities that chose to fight litigious threats of that sort often lose, citing the northern Los Angeles County city of Palmdale, which lost a court battle over the matter and was forced to make the switch, as well as pay millions of dollars in legal fees.
Similar notices were sent to Cathedral City and Indio in recent years, prompting both municipalities to switch to district-based elections.
In addition to engaging the services of a demographer, city officials say they will conduct “extensive community research … in order to ensure residents, particularly Latinos and others in underserved communities, are informed about the city council’s transition to a district-based electoral process,” which was expected to be completed by the end of the year.
Those who cannot attend may watch the meeting live on Palm Springs Community Television Channel 17 or online at www.palmspringsca.gov.
Other public meetings are slated for Sept. 20, Oct. 4, Oct. 17, Nov. 7, Nov. 21, and Dec. 5.
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