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Home – California Politics & News – How One Duo Uses California Voting Rights Act to Flip Red Cities—With Your Tax Dollars

How One Duo Uses California Voting Rights Act to Flip Red Cities—With Your Tax Dollars

Huntington Beach’s grip as Orange County’s conservative stronghold is under threat from a new court ruling. But this isn’t the first time the attorney and one of the plaintiffs have led the charge to reshape a conservative city.

In late June, Orange County Superior Court Judge Craig Griffin tentatively ruled that the city must switch to ranked-choice voting, undoing the “at-large” system in which voters in Huntington Beach have always cast ballots. The decision came after a lawsuit brought by the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project (SVREP) and local Huntington Beach resident Victor Valladares.

Attorney Kevin Shenkman argued that the current system makes it harder for Latino voters to elect candidates of their choice.

Under Huntington Beach’s longtime at-large system, every voter gets to weigh-in on all open council seats, and the top vote-getters win no matter where they live in the city.

Ranked-choice voting flips that script. Voters rank candidates by preference. If nobody clears a majority on first choices, the last-place finisher gets dropped and votes get redistributed until someone does, all while preserving the citywide at-large setup the charter demands.

But Shenkman and SVREP’s lawsuits alleging violations of the California Voting Rights Act, a 2001 state law designed to make it easier for minorities to challenge at-large elections they say dilute their voting power, are nothing new in the state.

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In the Golden State, these shifts from at-large to district or ranked-choice voting often end up favoring Democrats, as it has held a Democrat supermajority for over 15 years. Due to the system, targeted districts are created where growing Latino and other minority populations, who have leaned Democratic, can more easily elect preferred candidates.

The Lore Behind the Attorney

Shenkman, who runs Shenkman & Hughes PC with his wife, has become one of the most active lawyers wielding the California Voting Rights Act to challenge at-large election systems across the state.

The Malibu attorney was born and raised in Detroit. He earned his undergraduate degree from Rice University and his law degree from Columbia University. After law school, he moved to Los Angeles and worked at major firms including Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, Morrison & Foerster, and Hennigan Bennett & Dorman.

In 2011, Shenkman started his own firm. That same year, he reportedly received a call from Darren Parker, the former chairman of the California Democratic Party’s Black Caucus. Parker asked Shenkman about using the act to challenge at-large systems, thus launching the Malibu........

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