The Challenge

In recent years, cities throughout California have been legally challenged to shift from at-large elections to district-based elections, with the 2002 California Voting Rights Act as the basis. In light of this, and as part of the City of Irvine’s commitment to ensuring fair elections, the Irvine City Council voted in January 2023 to pursue districting and the expansion of the council from four to six, with a mayor elected at-large. Faced with the need to engage the public on this important issue and generate public participation, in March 2023, the City of Irvine tapped Tripepi Smith to implement a robust public engagement effort.

Our Approach

Team Tripepi Smith, consisting of Principal Jennifer Nentwig, Business Analyst Kylie Sun and Junior Business Analyst Madeline Wilson, worked with National Demographics Corporation (the City’s contracted demographer) and the City’s communications team to conduct an expansive outreach campaign to drive public participation. Tripepi Smith and the City leveraged a full array of outreach platforms to connect with the public.

 Key highlights of outreach efforts included:

  • Creation and management of a dedicated districting website, DrawIrvine.org, where extensive resources were made available for the public to learn about the districting process, access all the materials and meeting information, and draw maps based upon their understanding of communities of interest and submit them for consideration in the future
  • 54 social media posts spread across Facebook, Instagram and X/Twitter
  • Five flyers in English, Spanish, Arabic, Farsi, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Vietnamese promoting the five public hearings
  • Four news releases distributed to the City’s media contacts and published on the City’s main website
  • Three educational videos published to the City’s YouTube channel, streamed on ICTV 30 and made available on DrawIrvine.org
  • Utilization of several City-owned reader boards, including ICTV 30, Irvine Auto Center Board and Visitor Center Board to encourage resident engagement
  • Seven street corner banners installed at various locations throughout the City
  • Paid advertisement on several platforms, including Google, Meta, Nextdoor, Pandora and Spotify
  • Utilization of the City’s e-newsletter to 100,000 subscribers to drive awareness of the City’s districting process and promote opportunities to participate in community meetings
  • Phone contact with 55 community-based organizations to encourage their involvement in the districting process
  • 14 community forums, including 12 in-person workshops scattered throughout the City and two virtual workshops via Zoom
  • Seven forums to educate the public on the districting process, teach the public how to use the available mapping tools to draw a map, and to gather public input on neighborhoods and communities of interest
  • Seven forums to inform residents on the status of the districting process, review proposed district maps and gather public input on focus maps
  • Seven pop-up booths at various events (such as National Night Out and various festivals) throughout the City to share information about the districting process and answer questions
  • Five public hearing notices for each public hearing distributed to a number of publications
  • Partnership with KUCI radio
Results

Tripepi Smith’s outreach efforts achieved significant reach across platforms, including the website and via social media. The DrawIrvine.org website had 24,801 sessions from April 5 – September 25, 2023, from 16,532 users. With its social media content highlighting the districting process, Tripepi Smith achieved a reach of 116,192 on Facebook, 48,134 on Facebook and 118,058 on Instagram. Notably, ads on Spotify and Pandora achieved successful reach as part of this project – with a 30-second audio ad garnering 116,429 impressions on Spotify and 27,864 impressions on Pandora.

Through the robust outreach and engagement efforts, Irvine received the most community-drawn maps that National Demographics Corporation had ever seen (60 submitted maps). 

After extensive public feedback and engagement in the process, the City Council adopted a resolution to adopt the City of Irvine’s first voting district map for district elections. In March 2024, voters approved a Charter Amendment to move to district-based elections along with an increase in City councilmembers from four to six, while maintaining an at-large Mayor.