Justice
Fixing a City by Dividing It Up
Escondido is almost half Latino, but has elected only one Hispanic city councilman in 120 years. A new lawsuit aims to change that
Residents in Escondido, California, want their local elected officials to be a little more local.
A group of voters filed a lawsuit calling on the city to divide the city into voting districts. As it stands now, city council members in Escondido are elected at-large, meaning there are no geographic restrictions for where candidates live in the city or who can vote for them. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit allege that this system of voting has disproportionally underrepresented the city’s Latin American population.