Newport Beach voters could get two separate ballots for the election. Will it be legal?

Newport Beach voters might get two separate ballots for the November election, which will determine whether they vote on one local ballot measure, or four.

In one of the weirdest cases to join Orange County’s substantial history of election oddities, Newport Beach is scrambling to comply with a court order by trying to stage its own election in conjunction with the regular, general election. This is highly unusual — the vast majority of cities in Orange County, and across California, rely on the county registrar of voters to administer their elections.

Lena Shumway, Newport Beach’s city clerk, has been tasked with pulling off the flash election, including putting together voter rolls, getting ballots and election guides printed and mailed (there will be no in-person voting), and, if the election happens, counting ballots and verifying voter signatures. She told LAist she’s running into multiple roadblocks, some of them seemingly insurmountable.

And yet, she said, “We’re going to hold the election because we have to comply.”

How we got here

Newport Beach is in this bind because it challenged the validity of three ballot measures in court and, in the meantime, missed the deadline to have the Orange County Registrar of Voters place them on the general election ballot. The three measures would:

• Limit City Council members to serving a total of eight years — currently, council members are barred from serving more than eight years consecutively, but can run again as long as they take a break.
• Establish by-district voting where residents in each of the city’s seven districts vote only for their district representative on council — currently, all residents vote for representatives of each district.
• Add a “sunshine provision” to the city’s charters that would, among other things, require the city to make advisory committee meetings accessible to the public, and establish a “Sunshine Task Force” to watchdog public records requests.   
  

The measures are sponsored by the Southern California Opportunity Group, a company owned by local real estate developer Ken Picerne and his Picerne Group.

According to campaign filings, Picerne has sunk more than $1 million into these and a fourth initiative, Measure H, which will be on the regular, general election ballot. Measure H would essentially redo the city’s state-approved housing development plan and substantially decrease the number of units that could be developed.

How did Measure H make it on the general election ballot while the other three did not?

Measure H actually qualified last year, and the city promptly asked the O.C. Registrar of Voters to put it on the November 2026 general election ballot.

That didn’t stop the city from trying to block Measure H in court this year, but the effort was unsuccessful.

What’s so hard about putting on an election?

Historically, many cities did put on their own separate elections for city leaders and city-specific ballot initiatives, said Fredric Woocher, a Southern California-based election attorney. Some cities held local elections in a totally different month and day than state and federal elections. And some held them on the same day, with separate ballots.

“It was always very confusing to voters,” Woocher said. Plus, turnout for municipal elections was often dismal, leading the state to pass a law in 2015 requiring most cities to align their local elections with the statewide dates.

These days, there aren’t many companies around that offer the kinds of services Newport Beach needs, Woocher said. The city is already on its second ballot printing company, after the first company bowed out because the time frame was too tight, according to Shumway.

To help coordinate the election, Newport Beach hired a fledgling consulting firm, Stellara Group, which opened for business last year, according to its filings with the Secretary of State.

Under the contract, the city could pay up to $495,000 to Stellara and subcontractors if the election actually happens. That is still unclear.

Is Newport Beach’s parallel election really going to happen?

Shumway said there are several major hurdles that could make it impossible to successfully put on the city’s special municipal election.

For one thing, the O.C. Registrar of Voters has said it can’t provide the complete files for Newport Beach voters. This includes the signatures on file, which are used to verify mail-in voters’ identity, and confidential voter files.

Without this information, Shumway said, carrying out the election is essentially impossible “because we’re disenfranchising people … and we can’t verify signatures,” she said.

Bob Page, the O.C. Registrar, said he “felt bad” for the city during a recent media call. “I just can't put the general statewide election at risk by dropping what we should be doing to create ways to help them when their request has come way too late,” he said.

Another major hurdle for Newport Beach — the California Secretary of State has thus far refused to provide the city with the required watermark and special ballot tint. Without those two things, the printing contractor says it won’t print the ballots for the city’s parallel election.

The company has given the city until Oct. 7 to get everything in place, or else look for a new, third printing company. “At this point, it’s a waiting game,” Shumway said.