Redistricted Marina. What You Need to Know
Find out what district you live in: www.cityofmarina.org/933/District-Elections
Did you know Marina was carved into voting districts? Your voting experience will be fundamentally different this November.
You will vote for a council person in District 3 (Cristina4Marina City Council 2020) and District 2 (Kathy Biala for Marina).
Learn whose in the race and how vote by mail works.
The City of Marina is hosting an online information session Thursday, June 18, 2020 at 6 p.m.: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89418359375
From the City:
The City and the County of Monterey Elections Department are holding an online public meeting to answer all your questions and to learn how the new district-based elections effect the residents of Marina. Join us for the important elections information session to see how the changes impact you.
Learn more about:
Your new City Council Districts
Changes to the way you elect City Council Members
Polling Places and voting by mail
Attend the meeting on-line Zoom Meeting:.
Click on the link below or join by telephone with the instructions below. Please check back to this web page following the June 18th meeting to view the recorded video of the meeting.
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89418359375
Monterey County Weekly
An effort to diversify representation in Marina draws lines that protect incumbents.
Monterey County Weekly
Dec 12, 2019
If there is something Marina is proud of, it’s the city’s diversity. Over a third of residents can speak a language other than English and its public schools consistently place in the top percentile of the most diverse in the state. It’s even in the city’s mission statement. Yet, four out of the five current City Council members identify as white.
This was not lost on H. Frederick Seigenfeld, an attorney in Santa Barbara. Seigenfeld sent a letter to the city threatening he would sue under the California Voting Rights Act if Marina didn’t move from at-large to district elections. According to documents he sent to the city, since 1994 – that’s 13 election cycles – Marina has had just five winning candidates from minority categories, showing the lack of diversity has a history.
Transitioning to four districts (plus a mayor who represents the whole city) is meant to empower minority candidates to run to represent smaller neighborhoods, rather than the city at large
(The Weekly reported in October that Seigenfeld initially failed to present a plaintiff who was a Marina voter. On his second attempt, Seigenfeld found an allegedly aggrieved voter by the name of Daniel Cagape who, as far as councilmembers know, isn’t registered to vote in Marina.)
Marina had two options to avoid a lawsuit: Pay Seigenfeld $30,000 to leave the city alone until 2022, or adopt a resolution of intent to move to district elections in time for 2020 elections. The city opted for the latter. On Dec. 3 the council voted 3-2 to finalize a district map, with Councilmember Adam Urrutia and Mayor Bruce Delgado in opposition.
Though Urrutia was on the losing side, he’s not against district-based elections. “Even beyond the question of race and ethnicity, this is about the voters picking their representatives,” he says. “[But the Council] ended up picking goofy districts and gerrymandering them like crazy, specifically to protect those who are sitting now.”
Brian McCarthy, a Marina resident who participated in the map-making process, also has concerns about the chosen map, especially in Marina’s newest community, The Dunes: “You would think that would be one contiguous community, but it’s split.” The map cleaves The Dunes into the districts of two current councilmembers, Frank O’Connell and Gail Morton, who are both up for re-election in 2020. (The other two are up for re-election in 2022.)
“There are a lot of growing pains here, but this map doesn’t appear to be unbiased, which is why the lines are so skewed,” says McCarthy, who also favors district elections in general. “We can’t fix it until we decide to redraw the maps.”