Two years of negotiations with the country’s oldest Latino voter registration nonprofit culminated in an electoral system change for the city of San Luis Obispo.
Starting November 2026, all eligible voters in SLO will only cast one vote for City Council every two years. The two candidates receiving the greatest number of votes will win City Council seats.
The “vote-for-one” model swaps out the current system where voters cast two votes for two City Council candidates. They will continue to cast one vote for SLO mayor every two years.
“The new system remains consistent with the city’s charter because it remains an at-large method of electing City Council members,” City Attorney Christine Dietrick said at the Jan. 13 council meeting. “So, although we are transitioning our electoral system, we are not transitioning into a district system or away from an at-large system.”
The City Council unanimously approved the new citywide single-vote method at the Jan. 13 meeting.
On Jan. 20, council members formalized a $120,000 outreach plan to educate residents through social media, emails, monthly community meetings, neighborhood meetings, and pop-up tables at city events. Learn more and sign up for email updates at slocity.org/singlevote.
Discussions about SLO’s election format have been active since 2023 when the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project demanded the city create voting districts to boost the voting power of marginalized groups like the local Latino community.
According to the group’s website, it’s registered more than 3 million Latinos to vote, trained 160,000 Latino leaders, and won 210 voting rights lawsuits.
At the SLO City Council meeting on Jan. 13, staff showed that litigation involving the California Voting Rights Act cost cities around California like Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, Anaheim, Modesto, Santa Clara, and Tulare between $118,000 to $22 million.
City documents noted that Santa Monica was the only California city to successfully defend itself against a California Voting Rights Act litigation demand after appealing a trial court ruling against the city. But in September 2023, the state Supreme Court reversed that victory, and active litigation demands $22 million from Santa Monica.
The voter group’s attorney, Kevin Shenkman, who also represented it in the Santa Monica case, sued SLO in December 2024 for allegedly weakening minority voting power through its at-large voting system.
The lawsuit claimed that the at-large system violated the California Voting Rights Act, which protects minority voters from being diluted.
SLO launched a voter and demographic data analysis in response, concluding that splitting the city into districts would conflict with the intent of the Voting Rights Act.
The study found that Latino voters aren’t concentrated in specific geographic areas in SLO. Dividing the city, in fact, could dilute their voting power.
The switch to the single-vote method is part of the city’s settlement agreement with the voter group, sidestepping costly litigation fees and attempting to preserve minority voting power in the process.
“The citywide single-vote model allows groups with shared priorities to work together across neighborhoods and different areas of the city to build coalitions across issues rather than just where someone lives,” city spokesperson Whitney Szentesi told New Times.
As part of the agreement, the city will pay $75,000 in attorney’s fees to the voter group for participating in negotiations to avoid litigation. SLO also agreed to limited payments to offset the group’s support in education efforts and participation in future data analyses for the 2026 and 2028 elections. These payments can’t exceed $10,000 per election cycle.
SLO City Councilmembers Michelle Shoresman and Emily Francis, whose terms end this year, will be the first candidates to witness the vote-for-one model in action if they choose to run for reelection.
Shoresman didn’t respond to New Times’ request for comment before press time.
Francis said it’s too early to confirm if she’s going to run again but will have a decision soon after discussing with her family. Competitiveness under the new model will hinge on how many candidates enter the race, their issues of focus, and how they run their campaigns, according to Francis.
“I think in many ways the new system won’t represent a huge shift for our city elections,” Francis said. “Election data shows that around 70 percent of city voters are already voting for one candidate. The real concern is ensuring that folks who have been used to voting for two are educated early and often about the new process, so we don’t risk overvotes.” ∆
Correction, January 22, 2026 9:14 am: The earlier version of this story misstated the frequency of City Council elections under the new single vote system. New Times regrets the error.
This article appears in Jan 22-29, 2026.
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