The Boston City Council has emphatically backed a plan to waive a special election for the seat currently held by District 7 Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson, who is expected to plead guilty to federal corruption charges on May 5 and to resign from the council at an as-yet-unspecified date.

Before it can take effect, the home rule petition — which passed 9-3 on Friday — needs to be signed by Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and then passed by the Massachusetts Legislature. Wu’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Under Boston’s city charter , Fernandes Anderson’s anticipated resignation would ordinarily trigger a special election if she leaves office more than 180 days before the next regularly scheduled election, or prior to May 8. Because a large number of candidates are vying to replace Fernandes Anderson, that special election would, theoretically, include both a special preliminary election to winnow the field down to two finalists and a special general election to determine the winner.

District 9 Councilor Liz Breadon, who cosponsored the proposal with Council President Ruthzee Louijeune, noted that the winner of that hypothetical special election would have to defend their seat almost immediately in the regular preliminary election scheduled for Sept. 9, which will be followed by a regular general election on Nov. 4.

“The big issue is just the calendar,” Breadon said.

“The person who would be elected in the special election, their results would be certified up to a couple of weeks after their special election in August, and then within a week or two they’d have to turn around and run again,” she added.

Breadon also cited the cost of conducting a special election, which she put at $200,000, and suggested that residents of District 7 — which includes all or part of Roxbury, Dorchester, Fenway and the South End — would be ill served by a jam-packed schedule to replace Fernandes Anderson.

“This is a diverse community,” she said. “There’s different language groups, there’s different communities there. I do think it’s confusing for people to have four elections in the space of two months.”

Louijeune noted that, under the plan crafted by her and Breadon, the winner of the District 7 seat in November’s regular general election would be seated as soon as the election results were certified, rather than waiting until January as is customary.

“This is a home rule petition that really started in community, that really wanted to ensure that candidates, residents of District 7, had sufficient time to really vet candidates, and understanding that the timeline as it exists was not sufficient,” Louijeune said.

District 2 Councilor Ed Flynn, who voted against the proposal, noted that a similarly crowded special election schedule took place just two years ago, when then- District 8 Councilor Kenzie Bok resigned to run the Boston Housing Authority and was ultimately replaced by Sharon Durkan, who now represents Back Bay and Beacon Hill.

“I ... have a difficult time saying that we’re able to have a special election in a wealthy white district, but we’re not going to have one in a district made up of many people of color,” Flynn said. “That’s the dilemma I have. That’s the glaring hypocrisy that I see.”

Another opponent of the proposed change, District 3 Councilor John FitzGerald, said that if compressed timelines are a concern, the council should be weighing more sweeping changes rather than an altered schedule in this one particular case.

“If there is an issue with this timeline, why was this timeline never brought up or amended prior to this?” FitzGerald said. “I just think if it means that much to people, we would have amended these rules already.”

Fernandes Anderson, who spoke near the end of the council’s deliberations, suggested the measure was unnecessary because she won’t be resigning her seat prior to May 8.

“I’m not sure why this was filed,” she said. “This feels like grandstanding.”

While Fernandes Anderson asserted Friday that the residents of District 7 don’t want a special election, other residents of the district, including former District 7 councilor and mayoral candidate Tito Jackson, previously told GBH News that a special election could be advantageous.

“It is of utmost importance that the district gains representation as soon as possible,” Jackson said.