San Juan Water District holds elections for members of its five-member Board of Directors every two years on a staggered schedule (2 positions in 2024, 3 in 2022), for four-year terms. These elections have been held via “at-large” elections – meaning all voters in San Juan’s wholesale service area – which includes your business or household – vote at each District election for candidates running to fill the open positions on the Board. The final at-large election for the District was held on November 3, 2020.

On March 30, 2020, San Juan Water District received a certified letter from lawyers for the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project alleging that the District’s method of electing Board members through “at-large” elections, rather than elections by division, violates the California Voting Rights Act. During the subsequent months in 2020, the District proceeded to establish geographic divisions for its elections, and to establish requirements for candidacy and voting. On November 9, 2020, the District adopted a map of electoral divisions, and decided to implement division-based elections, beginning with the 2022 election cycle.

The map of electoral divisions is available here:  SJWD Division Map

In November, 2022, elections for 3 District directors will be held in Divisions 1, 3 and 5. In November, 2024, elections for the remaining 2 District directors will be held in Divisions 2 and 4.

The following table lays out the steps the District took to implement division-based elections. The link to the right will take you to the list of hearings and meetings that were part of this process, and provides the materials that were used by the Board in its deliberations at each of those meetings.