Secret ballots violate Brown Act
Q: I attended a City Council Meeting today where the Council appointed members to an advisory board. The appointments were done in open session, but by secret ballot. After announcing the matter, taking questions and comments, the city council sat at the dias w/microphones off, each wrote their choices for the board on a piece of paper and handed them to the City Clerk who tallied the votes and announced the appointments, but without specifying which council member voted for which advisory board members.
Shouldn’t each council member have been required to cast his or her vote for the advisory committee members openly instead of secretly?
A: The Brown Act expressly prohibits secret ballot voting in open meetings. Any item under consideration that is not subject to a specific closed meeting exception must be conducted in a fully open forum. Thus, the city council’s action in casting their vote for the advisory committee members by secret ballot does appear to be in violation of the Brown Act.
Let me caution, however, that the view of the California Attorney General’s Office, at least in their 2003 interpretation of the Brown Act, is that there is no violation of the Brown Act when members of a body cast their ballot in writing so long as the written ballots are marked and tallied in open session and the ballots are disclosable public records.