As Huntington Beach voters prepare to mark ballots in March’s primary on a proposed charter amendment that could add voter ID requirements in city elections, uncertainty lingers for what will come of the measure if it were to pass.
That uncertainty ranges from whether it would force the city to run its own municipal elections, and not use the Orange County Registrar of Voters to consolidate elections, to who would decide how, or if, the new requirements are implemented. The measure doesn’t explicitly lay out how the city would enact the new requirements.
“There’s a lot of details that will be flushed out as this goes forward,” said Councilmember Tony Strickland, who helped create the amendments and is campaigning for them.
But the city doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel and can model implementing voter ID on other states that already require it, he said.
Voters in March will actually be deciding on three amendments: Measures A, B and C.
Measure A would allow the city to implement voter identification requirements and ballot drop box monitoring and would require a minimum number of polling places throughout the city, yet it doesn’t mandate the changes. Measure B etches deeper into stone the city’s flag policy and would require unanimous City Council approval to fly new flags. Measure C mostly proposes administrative changes, including shortening council vacancy appointments, moving the city to a two-year budget cycle and allowing the mayor to cancel council meetings.
The election is effectively a test of what level of voter support exists for some of the most contested policies the council’s conservative majority of Strickland, Pat Burns, Casey McKeon and Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark is pushing for. Three councilmembers, Rhonda Bolton, Dan Kalmick and Natalie Moser, opposed putting the three charter amendments to voters.
Protect Huntington Beach, a political group largely led by former councilmembers that’s campaigning against the measures,…
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