California cities are rapidly shifting from at-large to district-based city council election systems, according to a report released by CMC’s Rose Institute of State and Local Government.
The report, Mapping the Revolution in California City Council Election Systems, shows how this shift has been driven by the California Voting Rights Act of 2002 (CVRA), which was designed to empower Latinos and other minority groups to challenge at-large election systems that may dilute their voting strength.
Prior to adoption of the CVRA, only 29 cities in California (6.0%) used district-based elections; now 216 of the state’s 483 incorporated cities (44.7%) do.
The CVRA has sparked legal challenges that have prompted cities to adopt district-based election systems. Some cities have been forced to make the change after losing lawsuits, while many others have preemptively switched to avoid litigation. Notably, no city has ever won a CVRA lawsuit.
This trend toward district-based elections has accelerated, with the number of California cities adopting district elections nearly quadrupling between 2016 and 2024.
“It took some time for the CVRA to kick in, but it has now fundamentally changed local elections in California as nearly half the cities in the state have adopted district-based systems,” said Professor Ken Miller, Rose Institute Director.
The report explores the geographic and demographic patterns of this shift, revealing that larger cities are more likely to adopt district-based systems. For instance, 90.9% of very large cities (population over 200,000) and 75.0% of large cities (population 75,001-200,000) now use district-based elections. In contrast, smaller cities have been slower to make the transition, with only 22.6% of cities with populations under 35,000 adopting the system.
The report does not evaluate the impact of district-based elections on governance or political representation but provides a detailed, data-driven look at the pace and distribution of these electoral changes.
The report was co-authored by Rose Institute students Pieter van Wingerden ’24 and Aria Fafat ’27, with research support from Nikhil Agarwal ’24, George Ashford ’25, Audrey Donahue ’25, Andrew Cheung ’28, Olivia Frakt SCR ’27, and Keith Maben ’28.
To access the full report, visit www.roseinstitute.org.