Seattle goes to the polls on Nov. 4. One of the most interesting ballot measures is a proposal to change the way that Seattle city council members are elected -- from at-large representation to district representation. In the current system, there are nine numbered seats, each of which is elected at-large for a four year term. This year, five of the seats are contested, in 2005 the other four will be contested, etc. Unlike, say, San Francisco's more representative at-large system of the 80s and 90s, where all the candidates in the field run together and the top 5 or 6 vote getters win office, there is little rhyme or reason to the system of fixed seats. Challengers have to declare to contest a particular seat, and as we saw in the recent primaries, this leads the strongest new entrants to challenge only the weakest incumbents, eliminating several of the best challengers before the run-off.
The proposal for district elections would replace the at-large positions with nine geographic districts, with each district electing one council member. This seems like the purest common sense, for the following reasons:
1) Seattle has 563,000 residents and 359,000 registered voters. It is larger than some federal congressional districts. In order to get elected, each candidate has to reach that many voters. This requires a great deal of funding, organization and/or prior name recognition and offers an enormous advantage to incumbents.
2) With four or five races each cycle, the informed voter would have to be familiar with 8 or 10 candidates. In last month's primary there were over a dozen credible candidates for the four contested seats. It stretches credulity to believe that many voters will make the effort to educate themselves on this large a number of candidates. Again, this tips the scale to those who have name recognition, especially incumbents.
3) With nine people all elected by a simple city-wide majority, it is natural that most of the winners will appeal to the same winning coalition and offer little ideological diversity.
4) With nine councilmembers all claiming to represent the entire city, who does the citizen call when she has an issue with city government? As a member of the intersection of various minority groups (Republican, business owner, homeowner) I don't expect any of the incumbent council members to look out for my interests or to be particularly sympathetic to me. With district representation, I would at least be more likely to know my own representative and know who to call in case I had an issue.
Sounds like a no-brainer, right?
For some reason the Seattle Times is passionately crusading against district elections. I didn't quite understand their interest in maintaining the at-large system until I read Joni Balter's silly and fact-challenged attempt to defend the status quo. I fisk Balter's editorial in a separate post, here
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at October 17, 2003 11:51 AM