San Leandro voters are being asked to decide the fate of a charter amendment on the June 2 ballot that will change the structure of future City Council elections.
Under threat of litigation, the City Council unanimously placed the charter amendment proposal on the ballot during a meeting in June of 2025.
The move was in response to a letter from lawyers representing Robert Bulatao, who lost a 2024 City Council election to current Councilmember Dylan Boldt.
The letter alleges that the city is in violation of the California Voting Rights Act because it uses an at-large election system to select councilmembers.
Currently, the city is divided into six districts in which registered voters nominate candidates who are then selected in a citywide election that includes all voters, a system the city has described as a “hybrid” electoral process.
That system “has diluted the voting power of Asian American voters,” according to the letter from the Oakland-based law firm formerly known as Goldstein, Borgen, Dardarian & Ho.
The letter argues that Asian candidates like Bulatao, who is Filipino, are at an unfair disadvantage in at-large elections because the cost of campaigning is much higher than in district-based elections, which are “more accessible to candidates whose donor and voting base is less socioeconomically advantaged.”
“Even though one-third of the City’s residents are Asian or Asian American, only one current member of the seven-member Council is Asian American and only two Asian American candidates have ever been elected to the City Council (Xouhoa Bowen and Benny Lee),” according to the letter, which is signed by attorney Ginger Grimes.
The city denies any wrongdoing but agreed to let voters decide the matter to avoid any costly, and likely-successful, legal challenges.
Cities and special districts throughout California and the Bay Area have been switching to district-based elections in the face of Voting Rights Act lawsuits and threats of such lawsuits, including AC Transit, Santa Clara, Oakland, Berkeley and San Francisco.
If San Leandro’s charter amendment passes with a simple majority, voters in districts 1, 3 and 5 will participate in district elections in November and in the other districts in 2028.
