Thousands of SLO County residents haven’t voted for a supervisor in 8 years. Why?
This June marks the first time in eight years that voters in Los Osos and Morro Bay will have a chance to vote for a representative on the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors.
Residents who live in the coastal communities said they felt disenfranchised and disparaged after losing their voice at the ballot box.
The years-long voting drought stems from the controversial Patten Map, which radically redrew district lines in 2021, only to be thrown out two years later.
Typically, SLO County residents cast a vote for a supervisor in their district every four years, but thousands of voters were skipped over in the last election cycle, according to county clerk-recorder Elaina Cano.
Los Osos resident and former interim Morro Bay city manager Andrea Lueker said it’s been a frustrating experience to not have someone directly representing them.
“Many people refer to Los Osos as the stepchild, which is so incorrect, and so then not getting to vote for a supervisor for that long period was — I think for a lot of people — just like the icing on the cake,” she told the Tribune. “It’s like, yep, we’re still ignored.”
But on June 2, residents will be able to vote for a District 2 supervisor in the primary election for the first time since 2018. Two candidates — Michael Erin Woody, who’s unaffiliated with a political party, and Democrat Jim Dantona — will appear on the ballot.
Why were thousands of SLO County voters disenfranchised?
Los Osos and Morro Bay residents have not voted for a county supervisor for eight years due to a “very convoluted” process that began with the most recent Census in 2020, Cano said.
After the Census, the county was required to redraw district boundaries to effectively balance population sizes in each of the five districts.
Even though there was not a pronounced shift in community populations over the prior decade, the Board of Supervisors adopted a radically redrawn map from its predecessor.
Officially implemented in 2021, the contentious new map — called the “Patten Map,” since it was created by Arroyo Grande resident Richard Patten — split the North Coast into three separate districts, whereas previously it was collected together in District 2.
Morro Bay was moved to the Third District and Los Osos went into the Fifth District. At the time, a Tribune analysis discovered that the map favored Republican voters, even though there were about 6,000 more Democrat voters than Republican voters in the 2021 election.
District 2 Supervisor Bruce Gibson, who was on the ballot for his fifth term in 2022, said the map was created to unseat him from office. Ultimately, the consequence was thousands of disenfranchised, ”orphaned” voters who became collateral damage, he said.
Gibson said that the decennial redistricting process always defers and accelerates some number of voters, but the Patten map “aggressively gerrymandered” the Second District.
“It was an insult to our local democracy,” Gibson said. “There was outrage in the Second District. Clear, ringing voices.”
Ultimately, the Patten Map was challenged in court and thrown out after a liberal majority took over the Board of Supervisors and directed the county to settle a lawsuit with a local citizens group.
In 2023, SLO County adopted a new map, called Map A, that closely mirrors previous district lines, returning Los Osos and Morro Bay to the Second District.
“However, per the California Elections Code, these boundaries are being phased in gradually over several years,” the county said on its redistricting page. “The full implementation will occur as existing terms expire and elections are held in each of the newly defined districts.”
Due to this new map’s gradual rollout, there was an eight-year voting gap for Los Osos and Morro Bay voters, Cano said, with District 2 scheduled to hold its first election using the updated boundaries this June.
In 2024, Central Coast State Senator John Laird introduced Senate Bill 977, co-authored by SLO County Assemblymember Dawn Addis, to create a SLO County Independent Redistricting Commission. Gov. Newsom signed the bill into law and the legislation went into effect in January 2025.
The commission will be responsible for redrawing the new district boundaries for county supervisors after the 2030 Census.
‘We were disenfranchised,’ Los Osos and Morro Bay voters say
More than 18,000 registered voters were left out of the electoral process on SLO County’s North Coast, according to Cano.
Currently, Morro Bay has a total of 8,023 registered voters, while Los Osos has 10,278 — a count that has fluctuated over the years, “but not by much,” Cano told The Tribune.
Former Morro Bay City Councilmember Marlys McPherson has lived in the coastal city for more than two decades. She said it was “a disaster” when the Patten Map went into effect seven years ago.
“We were disenfranchised,” McPherson said, though she added that Morro Bay residents were at least lucky to have an elected City Council to represent them, in comparison to its unincorporated neighbor, Los Osos.
“But obviously, you still want to be able to vote for your county supervisor,” she said. “I care who it is, because much of what happens countywide that I take advantage of is influenced by who the supervisor is, so it matters a great deal to us.”
Longtime Los Osos resident Lynette Tornatzky shared similar sentiments about the gerrymandered map.
“We all hated the Patten map and thought it was stupid,” she said. “It was clearly ridiculous the way it was chopped up, and it was weird to not have a vote for that amount of time.”
But as a Gibson supporter, Tornatzky said she still felt like he was her supervisor, even though her community was cast out of his district.
Gibson said he felt the same way, even though their votes didn’t put him into office.
“I had four terms of relationship with them, and so nothing, nothing really changed,” he said.
Supervisor candidates contend with confused, frustrated voters
While some voters are enthusiastic to have a voice again, others are confused or completely unaware that it’s time to vote for a District 2 supervisor again.
“A lot of folks forgot” or have gotten out of the habit of voting, Dantona said, which is why he’s been completing an extensive door-knocking campaign to remind residents about the race and start conversations with voters who have felt excluded from the electoral process.
“This is an opportunity to build that connection that may have been disconnected due to redistricting,” he said.
Woody said he completely understands the frustration as a Morro Bay resident himself.
“When people aren’t allowed to vote for a supervisor for the last eight years, and with all the major issues going on out here — offshore wind, battery plants, water development issues — they’ve reached a point where they just said enough is enough,” he said.
“I am one of those frustrated people that’s tired of feeling like that nobody’s listening to us anymore out here,” Woody said. “I fully get the frustration. It’s one of the reasons my name is on the ballot right now.”
Dantona and Woody both said they were opposed to the Patten Map and supportive of the Second District’s current boundaries.
Now as the June 2 primary election approaches, several voters said they are simply thrilled to have a say again in who represents them on the county Board of Supervisors.
“I think everyone’s excited about a chance to make a decision,” Lueker said. “And be back in the game.”
This story was originally published April 2, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
