Seattle District Elections (II)

Friday I explained why I'm supporting the ballot initiative for district elections for Seattle city council. The Seattle Times, on the other hand, is campaigning against district elections. Few of its arguments seem genuine or compelling, so I surmise that the Times has a selfish interest in maintaining the status quo. This comes across in Joni Balter's editorial arguing against district elections. This is a long fisking and the issues would be of most interest to Seattle readers. On the other hand, Balter's editorial is a masterpiece of arrogance, ignorance, ineptitude, sloppy fact-checking and should be held up as an example of how brazenly a newspaper's editorial page can serve its own agenda at the expense of informing its readers.

The editorial even starts with a supercilious headline, where Balter tells her readers she can predict their feelings.

Election by city district won't quell your anger

Subtext: Only we, the wise rational journalists at the Times know what's best for you ignorant, emotional lumpenreaders.

Many original goals for district elections have been rendered moot. When district election folks first started, they ranted about how difficult it was for challengers, especially in certain areas of the city, to raise money to run citywide and beat incumbents.

That's yesterday's argument. This year especially, incumbents are vulnerable.

Although there is broad dissatisfaction with the current council, only one of the five incumbents running for re-election is considered seriously vulnerable. But that's beside the point. There are many sensible arguments for district elections that are unrelated to dissatisfaction with the current council.

The district elections proposal is led by Jay Sauceda, former aide to City Councilman Charlie Chong, who often lamented West Seattle's lack of power. There was a time when West Seattle needed a louder voice in politics. Not now. Mayor Greg Nickels, Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis, City Attorney Tom Carr and Parks Director Ken Bounds all live in that neighborhood — almost a complete takeover.

Support for the measure comes from all parts of the city, not just from West Seattle. (I, for one, don't live in West Seattle).

The whole point of district elections now is there is no point.

One could also say that the whole point of Joni Balter is that there is no point, but that would be just as silly as her flippant dismissal of all the arguments that have been forth in favor of district elections, including these and the ones that I gave.

Voters who long have had a role in electing all nine City Council members suddenly would find their choice — their voting connection — reduced to one. If the measure passes, voters will be locked out of eight other races. Elect a dud in your neighborhood and you are stuck. Other council members will be tending to residents of their own area of the city.

Let's come back to the statement about those "who long have had a role in electing all nine City Council members" when we summarize the Seattle Times vested interest in the status quo. It is silly to suggest that a council member will only be interested in their own district or that residents of one district will have no influence or access to other council members. Certainly the whole point of districts is to make each council member directly accountable to their district. However, it is obvious that council members will also develop city-wide constituencies, will attract campaign contributions and volunteers from other parts of the city, will form alliances with their fellow council members on relevant issues, and many will have their eyes on higher office and therefore be far more attentive to voters outside their district than Balter wants us to believe.

Local business interests and members of the state Green Party (strange bedfellows right there) and former mayors and council members have teamed together to oppose this lame idea.

Local business interests and members of the state Green Party and current and former council members and state legislators (nearly all Democrats) along with Congressman Jim McDermott and The Shark Blog (strange bedfellows right there) and the Republican county prosecutor have all endorsed the idea.

Some people say district elections would assure more racial and ethnic diversity — a great argument, except it's not true.

It's not a great argument, it's an irrelevant argument. Observe that Seattle, which is only 8% black, recently had a black mayor. King County, which is only 5% black, currently has a black executive and Washington, which is only 6% Asian, has an Asian governor. That suggests that voters here don't make an issue about voting for someone of a different race.

Seattle often has had the nation's highest percentage of female City Council members.

What's the point? Women are not going to be disenfranchised in a district system. The ratio of men to women on the council at any point in time should not be relevant, but I'll observe that the Seattle city council currently has four of nine of the seats held by women (44%). On the other hand, the King County Council, which is elected by districts, has five of the thirteen seats held by women (38%). This is not a significant difference.

We also have had one of the most diverse councils, especially compared with our population.

Several years ago, four of nine council members were minorities — 44 percent — in a city that at the time was roughly 75 percent white.

Again, what's the point? District elections are not going to disenfranchise anybody. Never mind that there a lot more to diversity than the skin-deep diversity that Balter is fixated on. But even here Balter distorts the very notion of diversity on the council as a reflection of the diversity of the community. To have a perfectly diverse sample of a population is to have every group from the population represented in the sample in the same proportion that the group is represented in the whole. In this sense, it is impossible for a sample to be more diverse than the population, only less diverse. And while it shouldn't be seen as a problem that, say, white people might be significantly "underrepresented" on the council from time to time, I hardly think that it is, by itself, a particularly useful goal either.

In San Francisco, racial and ethnic diversity declined after district elections were adopted in 2000.

This is simply not the case. I've followed San Francisco politics since the mid-1980s when I moved to the Bay Area, and especially from 1990 to earlier this year when I lived in San Francisco itself. This page documents the history of the S.F. Board of Supervisors from 1980 to the present. The ethnic composition of the Board fluctuated from term to term. Most of the turnover was due to term limits and promotions to higher elected or appointed office. The first district election in this period took place in 2000. Immediately before the 2000 election, the Board had a single (appointed) black member, three Asians and a single (appointed) Latina. Following the 2000 election, the Board had a new elected black member, two elected Latinos and one Asian. Under the at-large system there were no Asians on the Board from 1980-1988 and only one Asian from 1988-1994. The first Latino in recent times was elected to the board only in 1994. In other words, the switch from at-large to district elections made no real difference in the board's ethnic composition (not that ethnic composition alone is the yardstick by which a city council should be measured).

Seattle Mayor Norm Rice recalls his run for City Council in the late 1970s. He and Councilman Sam Smith, both African Americans, were from Southeast Seattle. Rice believes he never would have been elected if he could run only against the wildly popular Smith. Rice's considerable talents would have been lost.

This is an extremely silly argument. No matter which way you organize an election, somebody will get elected that might not get elected under a different system. Of course, we'll never know whose mayoral talents we've been deprived of all these years because we were denied district elections.

Already in San Francisco, there are calls to switch back to at-large elections.

Yes, and in Mississippi there are "calls to switch back to the Confederacy", but so what?

"... District elections have helped balkanize the city into tiny fiefdoms where, in a town of nearly 800,000 people, a political neophyte can sneak into office with just over 5,000 votes," wrote the San Francisco Chronicle editorial page Sept. 28, urging a return to citywide elections. "Critical citywide issues ... have been sidestepped while individual supervisors make backroom deals to subvert the voters' will, knowing they can get elected in their gerrymandered districts."

We need to emulate this ... why?

This is nonsense. The cited editorial references Chris Daly (admittedly a terrible supervisor), but neither Daly nor anybody else was ever elected with 5,000 votes. (In Seattle, with 360,000 registered voters and nine council positions, each district would have about 40,000 registered voters) In fact, most San Franciscans are happy with district elections. There is no serious movement to go back to the previous at-large system, which in any event was a proportional representation system and very different from Seattle's current at-large system. This particular editorial (10 WAYS TO IMPROVE SAN FRANCISCO) is not related to any popular initiative to repeal district elections. It is merely a wishlist of pie-in-the-sky ideas, including "Create an ethical climate" and "Pay more attention to detail"

Some key support for the "yes" campaign comes from outside Seattle, from ACORN, part of a national group that promotes economic and political justice and election change, and a Bellevue attorney, Randolph Gordon, who has donated money and legal services.

Here is an official chart showing the origin of contributions to the campaign. About half of the campaign funds come from outside Seattle, and it does raise eyebrows that Randolph Gordon has kicked in as much money as he has. On the other hand, people from all over the city have funded and endorsed and volunteered for the districts campaign. What Joni Balter doesn't tell us is that the only organized opposition to districts is mostly funded from outside Seattle. Indeed, the Seattle Times is not exactly a Seattle institution either, as it is owned by Knight-Ridder (of San Jose, CA) and the Blethen family, whose members live in the suburbs of Mercer Island and Bellevue.

The last time district elections appeared on the ballot, a West Seattle businessman secretly funneled money to the campaign during a fight with the city over a helipad he wanted.

So what? That was last time and is unrelated to the merits of the issue.

District elections are all about special favors, special interests.

Ah, special interests. If patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, then tirading against special interests is the last refuge of the polemicist who has run out of real arguments. All citizens have interests, and to demonize "special interests" is to imply that there are "common interests" that can be sorted out objectively and without the messy political process (called democracy) whereby individuals get together with like-minded folks and promote their interests in competition with other folks who are promoting different interests. All interests are special and therefore none are special. Yes, some people (a large variety, apparently) believe that their interests will be more effectively articulated through district elections. Boeing, Safeco, Delta Dental and the Seattle Times apparently feel that their interests will be better defended through the current system. Neither interest is any more "special" (i.e. less worthy of consideration) than the other, but let's not pretend that my interests are any more or less "special" than Boeings'

Our community clamors for leaders more skilled in ways of solving regional problems, such as transportation. District elections would create a council more narrowly focused — government by micro unit.

Our community has leaders who are designated to solve regional problems, they are the Metropolitan King County Council and the Washington State Legislature. I can understand why a newspaper whose owners/editors live in the suburbs would prefer that Seattle's government focus on regional issues. Those of us who actually live in Seattle would prefer that our council focus on making our city work a little better.

Mayor Greg Nickels backs district elections for obvious reasons. Council members elected by one-ninth of the population do not typically become daunting mayoral challengers.

Greg Nickels, recall, won his current office by defeating the incumbent mayor in the primary. At the time, Nickels wasn't a citywide figure either, he was merely one of the thirteen members of the King County Council.

So why would the Times be so desperate to defeat the district elections that it is reduced to making such hollow and in some cases dishonest arguments?

I found only two legitimate arguments buriend in the entire piece. I don't go along with them, but I can see why someone might make them:
1) "Voters who long have had a role in electing all nine City Council members suddenly would find their choice — their voting connection — reduced to one."
and
2) "Our community clamors for leaders more skilled in ways of solving regional problems"

Those issues encapsulate the Times' interest in the election system. As a paper with suburban owners, executives, advertisers and readers, the Times has a vested interest in keeping the city council focused on a regional agenda. This wouldn't have to be a calculated conspiracy, but it is reflective of a mindset that is more concerned with regional highways than the streets in my neighborhood. A council that spends more of its energies on Seattle neighborhoods doesn't do very much for the Times suburban constituents.

I also think that there's a basic issue of business economics at work. Now, it's relatively easy for the Times to cover local politics and remain influential when all the candidates are focusing on the same set of issues. With four or five different council races occuring simultaneously, the Times would have to spend more time covering each race, each district and address the neighborhood issues. That's a more expensive proposition, requiring more reporters and more pages. It also means more competition from the free neighborhood papers which have more expertise in the districts and whose importance is raised by district elections. Yes, it sucks to have more work dumped in one's lap. But most big city newspapers can handle it, I'm sure the Times will be able to handle it too.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at October 19, 2003 08:00 AM