Seattle District Elections

Both the Seattle Times and the Post-Intelligencer continue their campaigns against district elections for Seattle City Council. The P-I says that the district proposal is

not a plan that promises overall improvements

and that

Congress and the Legislature, elected by districts, are hardly immune from missteps

Yes, but any form of government, including elected government, will inevitably be flawed. Those of us who support district voting are not looking for perfection, only for a sense that we have a representative who is more accountable to our concerns. The best thing the P-I can say about the current system is

Filling all nine positions at-large makes it in every council member's interest to keep the whole city's needs in mind. That may well be why the city has relatively generous social-service programs.

Hint: being "generous" with the taxpayer's money is a good way to motivate businesses to leave the city.

The P-I concludes that there may be a better system for electing the council, but they have no idea what it is, so let's not do anything until we know what's going to "ensure" [their word] improvements. Another hint: in politics, it is nearly impossible to "ensure" that any action will produce any particular result. But the most important aspect of a system of representation is for the voters to feel that they are being represented, and district representation seems to do a better job of this than an at-large system in a city as large as Seattle.

The Seattle Times ran a pair of side-by-side pro/con op-eds on the subject. A married couple writing in favor of districts described a specific example of why they believe a district representative would help improve quality of life in their neighborhood. The anti-districts op-ed regurgitated most of the same abstract and unfounded assertions that have been appearing in the Times, such as in Joni Balter's editorial that I comprehensively fisked the other day. The writer said that she

decided to oppose district elections after five months of learning, as a member of the citizen advisory panel on council elections. We were a panel of 15 diverse people with varied backgrounds and viewpoints on many things, including district elections... In the end, it was a strong statement that no one voted to recommend district elections for Seattle.

The list of the advisory panel is here. The group of 16 included 4 attorneys, 3 academics, 6 employees of local government or non-profits, a former city council member, the leader of a fringe group that calls for proportional representation and a Green party activist. That doesn't sound all that representative of this city's diversity to me. It was hand-picked by the sitting council, which has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, so it's no surprise they voted to maintain the current system.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at October 31, 2003 02:35 PM