Two South Orange cities recently made decisions on how voters will be choosing councilmembers in the 2026 elections.
In Mission Viejo, elections will start being staggered again and in Laguna Hills, the city is set to transition to by-district elections with voters choosing a councilmember from their geographic area, versus the at-large elections that have been traditionally held.
The Laguna Hills City Council is scheduled on Tuesday to hold a final public hearing to adopt the map for how the city should be divided into five council districts and set the sequencing for rolling out the new seats.
The city is the latest to have been challenged that its at-large voting process disenfranchises minority voters, and in September the council voted to transition the city to the district-style of voting. A majority of Orange County cities have made the switch in recent years, facing similar election equity challenges.
“I considered myself lucky that I didn’t represent a district, that I represent the whole city,” Councilmember Don Caskey said. “Because I see Laguna Hills as being a town, a little town, even though we are 30,000 people. But I really believe, if you live in a community and you have some kind of a connection with a councilmember who serves your district, I don’t see anything wrong with that at all, as long as we come together as a council and serve the whole town, our whole community.”
City leaders say the chosen Map 108, which is expected to be finalized next week, creates the geographic council districts that align neighborhoods, major thoroughfares and communities of interest most closely.
District 1 encompasses the city’s northern area, starting a tad north of Los Alisos Boulevard. District 2 stretches south to Paseo de Valencia and La Paz Road. District 3 picks up communities west of Alicia Parkway and pushes into District 2 a bit north of Laguna Hills Drive. District 4 is a strip across the city’s middle, filling in south to La Paz Road, including a bit more on the western side to Oso Parkway, and District 5 takes in the remainder of the city’s southern area.
“It provides contiguous, compact districts that align with our neighborhoods and major roadways and communities of interest,” Mayor Joshue Sweeney said at the last council meeting when the map was settled on. “It does an excellent job of respecting our neighborhood integrity, while ensuring equal representation across the city.
“The boundaries are easy to understand they are logical and align with our growth areas,” he added.
The council agreed 3-1 on the map, with Councilmember Dave Wheeler opposed because he felt it divided up too many of the city’s communities and another map was more consistent. Councilmember Erica Pezold recused herself from the discussion.
The council has also decided how to stagger the election process for the transition, and will vote Tuesday to confirm that districts 1, 2, and 4 would be up for election in 2026, and that districts 3 and 5 would be up for election in 2028.
Councilmembers in Laguna Hills are limited to two consecutive four-year terms.
Mission Viejo last had staggered elections in 2020; in 2022, all five seats ended up on the ballot as the city transitioned to district elections, and in 2024, no councilmember appeared on the ballot as a result of an earlier judge’s decision.
All five council district seats will appear on the 2026 ballot, but the council in November decided the winners in districts 1, 3, and 5 will serve four-year terms and those representing districts 2 and 4 will serve two years, thus getting future elections back on a staggered schedule.
In 2026, three of the council members, Brian Goodell in District 2, Trish Kelley in District 4 and Wendy Bucknum in District 5, will be termed out. Mission Viejo city code allows three terms served.
Current Mayor Bob Ruesch, representing District 1, and Councilmember Cynthia Vasquez, District 3, who has already declared she intends to run again, are in their first terms. Both of their districts will get four-year terms.
The city initially looked at a cumulative voting system following a lawsuit that argued the city’s at-large elections diluted the community’s Latino vote, with officials saying it would be hard, given the city’s population distribution, to draw districts that would have impact.
But state election leaders objected, so the city instead started the process for switching to by-district elections.
In 2022, the city was sued over term limits as part of that transition and an Orange County Superior Court judge ruled that council members improperly extended some terms and all five should appear on that year’s ballot.
The recent decision on staggering term limits was made so there wouldn’t be an entirely new council with no prior knowledge, said Ruesch. Some residents questioned the council on which seats were chosen for shorter terms.
The council followed the previous rotation of two seats in one election, followed by three in the next election, in place since 1988, Ruesch said.
“The majority of us saw no reason to change that stagger,” he said. “There was some thought that we should reverse that because it would give an opportunity to have three seats up during the general election, with the thought that there might be more voters. History said there was no reason to change, and the preponderance of city members agreed, and that’s how we moved forward.”
The council decided that Districts 1, 3, and 5 would have four years, he added, so there would be more representation across the entire city.
“The north end is District 1, the central and south end is District 3 and the middle is District 5,” Reusch said. “So you had what seemed to be the best way to represent the entire city. The worst thing would be having only one half of the city having a complete change and one half not, so would you have good representation across the board? We took the route that we thought was the fairest and the most consistent with what we had done in the past.”