District Based Elections | June 2025
How district-based elections are gradually reshaping Silicon Valley’s city councils
By Heidi Young
Despite Silicon Valley's diverse population, the region’s city councils often lack representative diversity — a disparity that can be partially attributed to election methods. As of November 2024, the majority of Silicon Valley cities (54%) still employed at-large election systems, where council members are elected by the entire city population. In contrast, district-based elections divide cities into single-seat districts, with each district electing one representative who must reside within its boundaries. Some cities with by-district elections continue to hold at-large elections for the mayor.
Source: City Council websites. Analysis: Silicon Valley Institute for Regional Studies
A shift to district-based elections has been underway across California since the passage of the California Voting Rights Act (CVRA) in 2002. Of the 18 cities (46%) in the region that held by-district elections in 2024, most made this transition within the past decade. Jurisdictions are in violation of CVRA if it can be shown that their election method results in “racially polarized voting” or “impairs the ability of a protected class to elect candidates of its choice or its ability to influence the outcome of an election.” The law provides plaintiffs with a legal framework to challenge local voting systems, offering significantly broader protections than federal voting rights legislation. If a city decides to fight a CVRA challenge in court and loses, they don't just pay their own lawyers — they have to cover the plaintiff's legal costs too. That's a powerful motivator for a city to switch to district-based elections when facing a CVRA lawsuit, and we’ve seen this transition play out throughout the region.
Research shows that cities switching to district-based elections typically increase elected representation of previously underrepresented groups by 10% to 12%, and up to 21% in jurisdictions with large Hispanic or Latino populations. Exemplifying this pattern, the City of Santa Clara council transformed markedly after fighting and ultimately losing a CVRA lawsuit in 2018 and a subsequent appeal in 2020. The trial court required the city to adopt district-based elections and pay the plaintiff’s attorney fees and costs totalling more than $3 million. The results were transformative. Combined, the 2018 and 2020 by-district elections resulted in three Asian residents winning council seats, marking the first time any Asian had been elected to the council despite Asians comprising 47% of the city's population according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 Decennial Census.
Meanwhile, South San Francisco in San Mateo County proactively adopted district elections in 2018 by utilizing the "Safe Harbor" provision (AB 350), which allows cities 45 days after receiving a demand letter to adopt a resolution stating their intent to transition, followed by a 90-day implementation period — a strategy that helped the city avoid costly litigation.
