Mailbag: H.B. council majority’s moves are reactionary

Some members of the Huntington Beach City Council are attempting to require voters to present an identification card of some sort prior to casting a ballot in city elections. Why are these council members attempting to eradicate a problem — voter fraud — the Orange County Registrar of Voters has determined is virtually nonexistent?

Additionally, this council majority has disbanded several municipal commissions, including the Huntington Beach Human Relations Commission and the Mobile Home Advisory Board, which allow for greater citizen participation in our municipal government.

This council majority seems intent on diminishing democracy in Surf City. Will these moves against voters and commissions composed of the grassroots citizenry reduce resistance to their reactionary agenda?

Ben Miles
Huntington Beach

The July 29 Daily Pilot headline (Huntington Beach could axe 2 longstanding boards and committees, change city charter) regarding the Huntington Beach City Council agenda made me hopeful that you would publicize the council majority’s heinous proposals to amend the city charter. I was extremely disappointed to see that you did not write one word about the proposed charter amendments in the article.

Dismantling of the Mobile Home Advisory Board and Human Relations Commission is definitely unfortunate. It reflects the council majority’s effort to silence all opinions other than their own. But given the fact that the council has now packed those forums with their own lackeys, they have already been rendered ineffective so there is little left to save during the offices of the current council majority.

It is the proposed charter amendments that should be of most concern to the community. It appears that you failed to read the agenda supporting document, intentionally hidden behind a benign sounding agenda title, the contents of which pose a threat to democracy in Huntington Beach. The “Charter Review Ad Hoc Committee Proposals” (from a committee made up of the newly elected council members) of most concern are No. 5: Change the election cycles of the Clerk and Treasurer to the Gubernatorial election, obviously to reduce participation; No. 6: Modify the qualifications required for city clerk candidates to remove all training and education requirements, except for any four-year bachelor’s degree (this appears to clear the way for the unqualified wife of the city attorney to run for the office); and most disturbingly, No. 7, which seeks to assert local control over municipal elections, removing them from the guardrails of the State Elections Code as to “all aspects of elections.” The proposal seeks to impose council directed voter identification, the operation of city located polling places and provide for “monitoring of ballot drop boxes.”

Obviously, if requirements for voting in city elections varied from the state-mandated rules, separate elections would be required to enforce the ID verification process and ballot box monitoring provisions. And how would the less qualified clerk handle the vote counting process? Clearly, what is intended here is voter suppression and total control by the newly elected members and their anointed candidates. While it is doubtful that these efforts to take over elections would be deemed legal by the state or even workable, public opposition will be required to stop the ball from rolling in the intended direction.

This sort of heavy-handed effort to take total control of government operations is a key element of fascism, which seems to be the direction this council majority is taking. I do hope that you will carefully read the proposed charter amendments and publish them with the same level of importance you afforded to removal of boards and commissions.

Linda Sapiro Moon
Huntington Beach

I attended the Aug. 1 Huntington Beach City Council meeting, spoke in opposition to the proposed changes, and naturally was outraged at the results. It is a date that will live in infamy for not only myself but all of the many dozens of board, commission and committee members and their supporters who witnessed this bludgeoning of our civic democracy. The right-wing council majority demonstrated that they do not care for community wishes that run counter to their warped authoritarian ideology. They have effectively hijacked local government. If it wasn’t obvious before, it is now. Other issues like Pride flags and library services were the prelude. Now, it is cutting our city to the bone. Next they will remake the city charter in their own image and control all of us outright. Several speakers at the council meeting pleaded with the council majority not to gut the volunteer bodies that had represented the city well, but those pleas fell on deaf ears. No mercy. It will doubtless take years to repair and reverse the damage these iconoclasts have done to our local government, but the wake-up call has been sounded. We deserve real representation and not the fakery foisted upon us by these impostors. We will rise again.

Tim Geddes
Huntington Beach