Former Charter Review Commissioner Gilman Blows Whistle on Council’s Voting Expansion Shenanigans

After sitting through six months' worth of discussion about topics for the Charter Review Commission to consider, former Commissioner Tobin Gilman was floored that CM's. Carrasco and Arenas introduced a midnight motion on 1.11.22 to include non-citizen voting into the discussion. Gilman recommends the city reject such divisive manipulations and return to a level-headed, businesslike approach to charter review considerations. From Gilman's Medium account.

At the Tuesday night city council meeting where a proposed charter amendment to extend municipal voting rights to noncitizens was discussed, Councilmember Mahan asked why the Charter Review Commission didn’t study the issue. City Clerk Toni Taber succinctly explained that throughout hundreds of hours over the course of almost a year, the subject “just never came up.”

That fact speaks volumes about the Carrasco — Arenas memo. The CRC was stacked with agenda-driven political activists. They brought a litany of progressive causes to the table. No grievance was left behind. And yet voting rights for noncitizens never came up.

It’s hard to believe it wouldn’t have come up if there truly was widespread discontent with the culturally enshrined citizenship voting requirement bubbling below the surface among noncitizen residents.

More likely, the last-minute memo was a vessel for a manufactured wedge issue — produced, packaged and sold by Silicon Valley Rising, the South Bay Labor Council, and other like-minded groups. They meticulously planned and executed the pregame press conference the day before the council meeting, the 100+ scripted robo-calls during the meeting, and the ongoing social media campaign. The timing of the memo was surely no coincidence.

The Woke movement’s goal is not to promote fairness, inclusiveness, and democracy. It’s to gin up hate, anger, and division in the community ahead of this year’s elections. Sadly, what they’re doing seems to be working. The match has been lit. The racial and partisan tribal drums we heard during the policing debates and the redistricting wars have again gotten very loud, very fast.

I hope the council will see the memo for what it is and won’t get sucked into an unnecessary municipal civil war. Regardless of one’s views on noncitizen voting rights, there’s a right way and a wrong way to deliberate on the question. There’s too much hostility and divisiveness in the wind these days. A three-hour study session followed by a rushed ballot measure campaign where both sides shout sound bites does nothing to unify the community or promote a common understanding of a complex issue.

Read the whole thing here.

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Photo by Tim Evanson.