Tag: elections

San Marcos City Council Elections are Problematic

by The San Marxist, posted in City Council Elections, Explainer

Why are San Marcos City Council elections so bad?

First, every person in the city can vote for every city council position.  (In other words, they’re all at-large.)  At-large elections have a very problematic, racist past.  Generally, it works like this: Suppose your city is 70% white and 30% black.  The white majority can elect their favorite candidate in every single council election, and so a city ends up electing a 100% white city council.  

What’s the solution? Usually, single-member districts. This means dividing the city into six equal parts, and each part gets to elect one city council member. We do this for school board elections already. (Probably the mayor would still be elected at-large.) If we had single-member districts, then the candidate would have to live in the district they represented, so we would have city council members from all over San Marcos. It’s also easier on the candidate, because they can focus on a smaller region and concentrate their efforts.

So, lawsuits get filed. The SMCISD school board was sued in the mid-90s for having all at-large elections. (Could not find any record of it online, beyond #60 listed here by the lawyer who brought the lawsuit. That’s when they went to 5 single-member districts and 2 at-large positions.) Austin, San Antonio, New Braunfels, and Seguin are all single-member districts because they’ve all been sued or struggled over it.  Austin here, San Antonio here. There’s a whole chapter on Seguin here. And here is a fascinating Washington Post article from 1983, on MALDEF bringing lawsuits against Lockhardt, Corpus Christi, and Lubbock. The last sentence in the article is:

Last week MALDEF filed suits affecting city council systems in Pecos and Port Lavaca, and school districts in New Braunfels, Port Lavaca and Pecos.

So there you have it: 1983.  ANYWAY. Who still has all at-large districts in 2022? We do! Boo, hiss! 

But wait! There’s more! We have a peculiar system of declaring places.  Right now, we have four candidates for city council – Max Baker, Matt Mendoza, Saul Gonzalez, and Adam Arndt.  Suppose my favorite candidates are Max and Matt, and I don’t like Saul or Adam.  Well, I’m stuck, because Place 1 is Max vs Matt, and Place 2 is Saul vs Adam.  I can’t vote for my favorite slate of candidates.  That’s not the best way to elect a council that reflects the choice of the people.

Declaring places does not serve a purpose for elections. We could say that Max, Matt, Saul, and Adam are competing for two spots, and all the voters get to cast two votes. (We do this with judges, for example.) Then the top two candidates would win the two slots.

In my opinion, we should switch to single-member districts. (But you could easily convince me to try Ranked Choice Voting, also known as Instant Run-off Voting, or multi-member districts, or one of the other innovative electoral systems out there.)

Hour 4:12-5:20, 7/5/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Items 37 and 38: Plans for the fall election.  

Max Baker wants there to be more outreach for election workers and better pay.  Both seem reasonable.  

  • The county appoints election workers, and Max would like it to be a joint appointment with the city, in order to diversify the workers.  (Really, it’s hard to find people besides retirees).
  • The pay is very low ($11-$12/hour). Could that be made more reasonable?

A small bit of pettiness: Max brings this up during Item 38, but it’s a better fit for Item 37, so he moves to reopen Item 37.  Everybody votes yes except Mark Gleason, who snips “no” , appearing to aim to be a petty little thorn poking Max in the side. 

The vote: County and city joint appointment of election workers? 
Yes:  Everybody but Mark Gleason
No: Mark Gleason

The joint selection passes.  

For raising the pay, Max suggests the Hays County average wage, in order to give a changing benchmark which moves with inflation.  Mark Gleason frets that this will be just too hard to implement, due to the shared math between Hays County and San Marcos. 

The vote:
Yes:  Max Baker, Alyssa Garza
No: Mayor Hughson, Mark Gleason, Saul Gonzalez, and Shane Scott.

So this one gets voted down. (Mayor Hughson and Saul Gonzalez both say that they’d support it in the future, just not for this fall.)

…

Item 41: City Representatives to the Greater San Marcos Partnership (GSMP) committee.  GSMP is the business community.  There will be the Mayor, City Clerk, and two city council members.

Max Baker, Alyssa Garza, Mark Gleason, and Shane Scott all volunteer.  So there are two progressive and two conservative choices.  Alyssa makes a rather cute plea for support. (Right at 4:50:10.)

She gets five votes and Shane comes in second, and so they’ll be the representatives.

A small bit: Mayor Hughson voted for Mark Gleason and Shane Scott. That annoyed me, to go for the two conservative dudes. I’d expected her to vote for one from the left and one from the right.  She was the only person not to vote for Alyssa Garza.

…

Item 42: The Library board is proposing going fine-free.  Ending fines is very important – besides being an equity issue, it also drives people away due to the shame that lingers when they owe money.  They state that fines make up 0.25% of the library budget. 

City Council agrees to bring this forward as an issue that they’re interested in discussing.

While we’re on the subject of libraries:  we have a terrific library staff and lovely new facility, but very short library hours.  It’s got this beautiful lobby which should offer extended hours with free internet, but instead the library doesn’t open until 1 pm on Sunday, 10 am on Saturday, and 9 am during the week.  

Also, the number of books in circulation is too low, particularly in the children’s section, and the supply of e-books is low, and they are frequently unavailable.  None of this is the library’s fault – it’s all funding – but it would be nice if it had more books and longer lobby hours.

…

Item 43: COLAs for Council Appointees:

Yes: Everyone.
No: No one.

I only include it because we’ve discussed this before. 

…

Item 45: We got a letter from the Mayor of Austin! We’re so fancy.  The letter is from mayors across Texas, together with Amtrak. We’re going to sign it.

Here’s the letter:

Will it do any good?  I am pretty pessimistic about this state’s ability to ask for free money to help improve the lives of Texans.  (See also: why don’t we expand medicaid, Greg Abbott?)

Comparing I-35 to the Hamburg-Berlin train line seems so ill-suited for a Republican audience that, to me, it reads like a tacit acknowledgment that the Texas Department of Transportation is going to wad this letter up and throw it in the trash. But maybe not!

Having a functional rail system in Texas would be amazing, and I’d love to take the train all over the place.