Trish Kelley Games the District Voting System
In response to a 2018 voting rights lawsuit over at-large elections, Trish Kelley and her fellow Mission Viejo Council members embarked on a four-year journey to allegedly implement a new election system based on "cumulative voting" instead of the standard district-based system. They refused to consider district voting because it would have forced Council members Greg Raths, Ed Sachs and Trish Kelley to run against each other. For years, these three Council members lived near each other in the south part of Mission Viejo.
In the spring of 2021, when it was becoming clear the City would finally lose its costly and confusing battle for cumulative voting, Trish Kelley made a strategic move from her longtime residence in south Mission Viejo to a new home in the central part of the City. Five months later in August 2021, after being admonished twice by the Secretary of State, the Council reluctantly voted to adopt district voting.
But then Kelley and her colleagues further manipulated the district formation process by delaying its start, limiting public input to a three-week period in late December, and selecting their own specially designed district map, rather than any map proposed by the public. In February 2021, despite public support for proposed "Map E" -- which was then amended by the City's demographer as "Map E1," Kelly and her colleagues adopted their own Map A which did its best to create separate districts for each of its incumbent members. Kelley shut down any discussion of the merits of the alternate Map E-1 because the latter would have forced her to compete against Brian Goodell in one of its districts. Her new home address put her in District 4 on the City's Map A, unopposed by any other Council incumbents. See related article, “History of District Voting in Mission Viejo.”
A few weeks after adopting Map A and following in the footsteps of three of her colleagues,* Kelley voted in March 2022 to extend her own two-year elected Council term by another two years to November 2024. Kelley’s decision to extend her own term was particularly brazen—by default it would have automatically made her the Council representative for District 4 in November 2022, effectively disenfranchising the voters in that district. Fortunately, alert Mission Viejo residents quickly brought the Kelley term extension matter to the Orange County Superior Court. In June 2022, Judge Walter Schwarm ruled that Kelley (and Brian Goodell) would be required to run for election in 2022, given that the election in which they were elected clearly stated a term of two years. See related article, “2 ≠ 4.”
[* In 2020, Council members Bucknum, Raths and Sachs, with Kelley’s support, extended their stay in office by two years without any authority or vote to do so; they were later found guilty by the Court of extending their terms illegally.]
Despite the Court actions, Trish Kelley is running yet again for a seat on City Council. She is now asking the residents of District 4 to vote her back into office, when just a few months ago she tried to put yet another one over on them by extending her term illegally for another two years.
Kelley touts a lot of accomplishments and endorsements on her website; however, her voters should ask themselves if those are enough to outweigh the lack of integrity and disrespect she’s shown them by repeatedly gaming the electoral system to stay in office.