A measure on the June ballot in Tulare will propose amending the city charter to require the election of council members by district instead of citywide.

It's likely that Visalia voters will vote on a similar question in November.

If voters say yes, the two cities will join a growing list of Valley municipalities and school districts making the switch from "at-large" to district elections.

But if voters say no, the cities will be at risk of being sued by voting-rights organizations, such as the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, on grounds that they are violating the California Voting Rights Act.

Voting-rights activists have used the 10-year-old law to pressure cities and school districts in the Valley to switch to district elections, in hopes of improving the odds of Latino candidates.

"If an electoral system dilutes the vote of a racial or linguistic minority, they are entitled to a remedy, such as a new voting system," said Jessica Pfisterer, a legal fellow at the California Voting Rights Institute, a project of the Lawyers Committee.

District elections are a solution for racially polarized voting, she said.

In 2008, the Lawyers Committee successfully sued Madera Unified School District, forcing it to switch to district elections. That same year, Modesto voters approved district elections after an expensive legal battle between the group and the city.

To settle a lawsuit by the Lawyers Committee, the Tulare City Council last month voted 5-0 to put the question on the ballot and directed a demographer to draw proposed district maps that include at least one district and maybe two that have a large percentage of Latino voters.

"We did everything we were supposed to do," Mayor Wayne Ross said.

To date, the push for district elections has proven more controversial in Visalia than Tulare, said Bob Montion, a Visalia activist working with the Lawyers Committee.

"We're seeing a lot of good will in Tulare," Montion said. "Visalia, it's a different story."

In Visalia, a task force this week recommended that the Visalia City Council put the district question on the ballot. Like Tulare, Visalia has a city charter governing elections that can be changed only by voters.

Additionally, the task force recommended changing the number of council members from five to seven.

But instead of acting to put it on the ballot, council members opted to hold at least one public meeting to educate the public on the issue and hear voter views.

Still, it's a certainty that the council will put the measure on the ballot, Mayor Amy Shuklian said: "If we don't, for sure we'll get sued."

The task force said that parts of Visalia traditionally lack representation on the city council, and district elections would solve that problem.

Homes of council members tend to be clustered in the same areas, "like little kids in a soccer game," said task force member Steve Peck.

Montion said the task force's reasoning might get Visalia voters to approve district elections, and largely Hispanic parts of town are naturally inside easily defined geographic areas.

But Shuklian said she is skeptical about district elections.

"I think it has the potential to make things a little more divisive and a little more political in town," Shuklian said. "People get more territorial and they want a piece of the pot coming in to ensure the people in their district are happy and you lose sight of the city as a whole."

Council Member Warren Gubler said he will support district elections.

"There's no concrete evidence of racially polarized voting in Visalia, but the minority community has been underrepresented," Gubler said.

Former three-term Visalia council member Jesus Gamboa, believed to be the only Hispanic to win election to the Visalia City Council, said he fears that voters will reject district elections.

"The City Council needs to be visionary and show some leadership," Gamboa said. "We're not a trading post like 150 years ago. We're 44% Hispanic."