Mayor Meghan Sahli-Wells has not had a chance to wax even slightly sentimental about presiding over her final City Council meeting this evening at 7 back in Council Chambers.
She laughed when asked how she feels about Closing Night during here extremely lively, productive year in the rotating mayor’s chair.
“I am really focused on the agenda and not on that (personal) aspect of the meeting,” she said.
For days she has been laboriously poring over dense, revealing research by U.C. Davis scholars into California’s experimentation with voting-by-mail this century, and interviewing residents about the prospect of Culver City going all-mail.
This afternoon she still is in shock.
“What I have found out the in my research has been a game-changer,” said Ms. Sahli-Wells.
Once a powerhouse advocate for voting-by-mail, the mayor said that when the Council is polled this evening, she will vote “no.”
“We were going to go to all-mail voting for two reasons, to save on costs and increase voter turnout,” she said.
“But neither of those is true.
“It’s going to cost more, and there is no proof that it raises the turnout,” Ms. Sahli-Wells said.
According to the staff report, “the average voting-by-mail election would involve an increase of $9,500 in direct costs.”
Further, the City Clerk’s office would seek a onetime appropriation of $20,000 “for the voter education project.”
When the U.C. Davis researchers surveyed the state of Oregon – home of some of the nation’s most energetic voters – “from a turnout and cost perspective, the data does not show an identifiable trend.”
After her transformation, Ms. Sahli-Wells said her main question has been, “What are the goals we are trying to achieve by making this change?
“Everything we had assumed will happen, has not been borne out in the U.C. Davis research.
“I am afraid that going to voting-by-mail would increase disenfranchisement because of the (relatively high) amount of ballots that would not be counted, as the Davis research has shown.”
