Amid little competition for seats, the San Diego Unified School Board is proposing a ballot measure to eliminate primary elections for races with only one or two people running in them.
Currently San Diego school board candidates must run in two elections, a primary and a general, even if there are only one or two candidates running for the seat. That has been the case for all three school board seats, out of five total, that are up for election this year.
Two of those seats will automatically go to the incumbents because nobody else filed to run. Those seats are for Richard Barrera, who represents sub-district D or south-central San Diego, and Sharon Whitehurst-Payne, who represents sub-district E or southeastern San Diego. This is the fourth time Barrera has run unopposed, and this will be his fifth term on the board.
Only one non-incumbent is running for school board this year: Crystal Trull, a parent who chairs the District Advisory Council for Compensatory Education and a prior school board candidate. She is running against incumbent Sabrina Bazzo for the third board seat, representing sub-district A in north-central San Diego.
Even though none of those races needed a primary election to whittle down the field of candidates, they all still technically had to go through the primary to advance to the November ballot.
The school board voted Tuesday to propose a ballot measure that would eliminate those primaries whenever only one or two candidates have filed to run for a seat. That would include write-in candidates who qualify for the ballot.
The measure would require a change to the city’s charter, which governs San Diego Unified School Board elections. The City Council’s Rules Committee and then the City Council itself will have to approve the school board’s proposal for the November ballot.
