[9][10] Between 1909 and 1925, Los Angeles City Council members were elected in a first-past-the-post at-large voting system: Voters could cast their ballots for up to nine candidates, and the eighteen candidates who received the highest number of votes in a primary election then faced the voters a month later in the final round.

[11] The Los Angeles Times commented: The race of Estelle Lawton Lindsey was the one remarkable feature of the Council fight.

Mrs. Lindsey bears the distinction of being the first woman to serve on the Council in Los Angeles and one of the few women in public life ever given so important a commission.

Through it all, Mrs. Lindsey carried the weight of office with smiling dignity, receiving scores of callers whose business ranged from bearing greetings of the Governor of Pennsylvania to seeking the loan of a quarter.

[14]The stint had unexpected consequences two weeks later when City Attorney Albert Lee Stephens Sr. discovered that the city could be held liable for a default judgment because it had not responded to a summons served in a lawsuit seeking $117,000 in damages by a person who said his property was damaged by the "lowering of the Broadway tunnel."

[7][16] Other activities included: Lindsey was vehemently attacked by Los Angeles newspapers for her stand in opposition to a proposed—and very controversial—ordinance that would limit the placement, size and number of advertising billboards in the city.

Before the ordinance was adopted, she read into the record a lengthy article published in the June 10, 1917, issue of the New York Tribune "in which the newspapers and other big institutions of Los Angeles were assailed."