Of the many hundreds of elections I’ve written about, Newport Beach’s double election is as messed up as any I’ve seen.
The first ballot already plopped in most voters’ mailboxes from the Orange County Registrar of Voters around Oct. 5. It included choices for governor, other statewide and local offices, 14 state initiatives and Measure H, which would limit planned housing capacity in five designated areas to 2,900 units. That’s the normal ballot everyone expects to receive ahead of an election.
But for Newport Beach, this is no ordinary election.
Around Oct. 19, City Hall will send out a separate, stand-alone ballot with three questions on how the city governs itself. Measure P would cap council service at eight years for life. Measure Q would let each district’s voters, and only them, choose their councilmember. Measure R would set new open-government rules and create a Sunshine Task Force. In addition to Measure H, all four city ballot measures came from the Newport Beach Stewardship Association, which is trying to rein in development in the city and punish the council.
While Measure H’s placement on the general election ballot was straightforward, this separate standalone ballot has been a point of considerable debate.
The city fought the three stand-alone measures in court. It argued, among other things, that NBSA published its petition notice in the wrong newspaper. NBSA’s lawyer, Navi Dhillon of Paul Hastings’ San Francisco office, wrote in an Aug. 25 letter to the council, the city “has failed to disclose the full scope of the adverse legal rulings against it” over several months.
On Sept. 14, an Orange County Superior Court judge rejected the city’s arguments and ordered the concurrent election. But with the Nov. 3 election looming, the city had to scramble to figure out how to make it work . City Clerk Lena Shumway noted that Registrar Bob Page had to decline several administrative services due to late conflicts and handling his own election, though Page left open the possibility of handling the election if it was postponed.
Meanwhile, military and overseas ballots had to be rushed out to meet a federal deadline. For them, Shumway said, “We met the Sept. 19 federal deadline.” But as of my Oct. 1 call, “Because of our tight deadlines, we’re just finishing up the voter guide.”
“Those ballots did not receive the pro/con arguments for those three initiatives,” Councilman Erik Weigand told me. In a 4-3 vote, he was one of the minority who voted Sept. 18 to halt the election the day before the military and overseas ballots had to be mailed.
And in a Sept. 30 Register op-ed, he asked how “the average voter” is supposed to sort it all out.
Councilwoman Robyn Grant, who voted to hold the election Nov. 3, told me, “We’re subject to a judge’s ruling that has mandated that we have the election, and the city of Newport Beach is always interested in being in compliance with law.”
I’m sympathetic to postponing the election. But after all that has happened, and with Nov. 3 less than a month away, the city should just go with it. Then let the courts sort out the aftermath, which would happen no matter what.
A related case is Brosnahan v. Eu from 1982. It found “it is usually more appropriate to review constitutional and other challenges to ballot propositions or initiative measures after an election rather than to disrupt the electoral process,” except for clear invalidity. Indeed, the measures all might lose, mooting the dispute.
Lost in all the chaos is the fact that Newport Beach could be set up for even more courtroom fights and policy problems. If approved, Measure H would have voters throw out Newport’s state-approved housing plan and replace it with one that zones for fewer homes. The Voice of OC reported this “could set them up for a lawsuit from the State of California.”
In a related fight over state housing law, coastal neighbor Huntington Beach lost a challenge to California housing law when the U.S. Supreme Court on Feb. 23 refused to hear an appeal in City of Huntington Beach v. Newsom, leaving a lower court dismissal intact.
The battle over the measures may be just beginning.
John Seiler is an editorial writer and columnist for the Southern California News Group