Following up on Carl’s post yesterday, calling for a downtown legislative district, I’d like to join him in raising my voice in favor of also changing the way Seattle elects city council members.
Right now, all nine city council members are elected at-large, running in, and allegedly representing, the city as a whole, the result being, as Carl points out, that we are all represented by “everyone and no one.” It has also resulted in a relative lack of diversity on the council, not just in terms of race and gender, but in style and ideology. Combine the at-large system with the contrived way in which challengers jockey with each other to face off against the weakest opponents, and we tend to fill the council with citywide compromises.
On the other hand, there are obvious disadvantages to moving to district elections, which might inevitably create rifts in the council along neighborhood lines at the expense of the greater city good. If only there were a system that incorporated the best of both worlds.
Of course, there is, and a lot of other cities use it: a hybrid system in which some council members are elected by district, and others are elected at-large. And that’s exactly what I propose for Seattle in order to elect a council that is both responsive to the divergent needs of its constituent communities, while reflecting the larger needs of the city as a whole.
Specifically, I’d propose electing five council members by districts—central, northeast, northwest, southeast and southwest—and four at large. And if anybody wants to put up the money to put such a charter amendment on the ballot, I’d wager you’d have a damn good chance of getting this passed at the polls.
Great idea Goldy, I posted the very same thing a while back on Crosscut.
I’ll dig it up.
Like I said there, then, “I’m in.”
Here, David Brewster posted a story last year.
Check with your allies — the League of Women Voters of Greater Seattle. They don’t support districts but certain will be open to a hybrid combination of districts and at-large council members. Good luck!
I lived in Portland for some time and find this comment to be utterly incorrect; “Only Portland, Oregon and St. Paul, Minnesota have really transferred decision-making power and funding down to the neighborhoods.”
Portland used to be nice but now is one of the most screwed up place I have ever lived in.
Yesterday I did propose this solution. Course since it allows a lot of the public to participate it is crazy.
“Town Meeting is Brookline’s Legislative arm of government. It consists of 240 elected town meeting members plus the members of the Board of Selectmen, and any state representative or state senator who resides in Brookline. In addition, the Town Moderator, who presides over town meeting, and the Town Clerk, who acts secretary, are voting members. The 240 are elected by precinct, with 15 members elected from each of the town’s sixteen precincts. The members are elected for staggered, 3-year terms so that 5 members are elected from each precinct each year in the May annual town election.
Town meeting is responsible for passing a balanced annual town budget, and enacts all town bylaws. An Annual Town Meeting is held in the spring to enact the following year’s budget, plus whatever other matters are placed on the Town Meeting Warrant, either by the Selectmen or by citizen petition. The Annual Town Meeting is usually held the last week in May or the first week in June. A Special Town Meeting is held each fall, usually in November, to deal with any budget changes, zoning bylaw amendments or other matters placed on the warrant. See the Town Meeting Members Handbook (PDF) for more information on Town Meeting and its procedures.
Although only elected town meeting members may vote and propose motions, the public is invited to attend and the sessions are carried live on Brookline Access Television.”
http://www.brooklinema.gov/ind.....Itemid=404
The precinct idea is really good. I noticed that a few years ago when researching their muni wifi deployment.
Right you are about the problems of the all-at-large system we have now. It’s actually fairly rare these days. Of all the large cities in the country (>500k), only Detroit, Portland, and Seattle elect their entire legislative body at-large. And some would argue that Portland shouldn’t be on the list because it doesn’t have a mayor/council system.
But how did you come up with 5 districts and 4 at-large? What’s the rationale there? As a long-time Seattleite, it’s been my observation that the city divides up much more neatly into 7 districts. And the smaller the districts, the easier they are to cover by doorbelling and other grassroots campaign strategies.
Town Meetings are great, but even in New England, they are never used in cities with six-figure populations.
Cambridge, Massachussets uses Single-Transferable Vote Proportional Representation in their city council elections. If Seattle went that way, I would prefer keeping the Mayor directly elected.
http://www.cambridgema.gov/cco.....uncil.aspx
THe Cambridge method worked so well, that there were efforts to repeal it in the 50s and 60s, fearing a backdoor entry for the communists, just like the same excuse was used to repeal it in NYC. In Massachusetts, Cambridge voted to retain it every time.
Why not do the school district trick?
Phase 1, candidates get elected by District.
Phase 2, they run citywide?
I also wonder whether the issues is geography or something else?
What is the representation now?
SJ, might be a good idea to put that to the voters too. Although didn’t the last district proposal for the City Council get defeated, and an even earlier one get trounced? THe City COuncil has been elected by district before, but things kept changing until they decided on the at-large system.
Some resources on STV, also called Choice Voting. There were many other cities that once used it in the US. Minneapolis adopted it for Park Board elections(they use Instant Runoff Voting for their City COuncil). I first got interested in this concept, ironically from an op-ed in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer the last time they proposed districts for the City Council. Jan Drago did one for the current system, a proponent of the district plan had their own, but the group behind Fairvote.org ran their own op-ed promoting choice voting.
http://www.fairvote.org/choice.....sentation/
Answering my own question about the last time Districts were put to a vote, it was 2003. I remember now, it was the same year we voted out 3 City Councilmembers, which was rare for incumbants.
http://www.seattlepi.com/local.....ons05.html
former supporter of districting initiative here.
1. Portland is not a large city. It’s simply not comparable with larger cities either.
2. a proposal that is four at large and five districts has best chance of winning, given the Seattleite view that normally all ideas are good therefore hybrid includes both concepts, etc.
3. the real problem isn’t that running citywide means they represent no one. It means they need so much freaking money, they represent the district of MONEY and this is a district composed of corporations, interest groups, and to a very large degree lawyers developers property owners and others with busienss in front of the city so that when you run your consultant hands you a list of phone numbers of folks who can be cold called for donations above 200 dollars…lists of people who give 200 bucks or more to more than one candidate per cycle….that is, disposable incomed, what we used to call RICH PEOPLE. Then go look at the donations by neighborhood put out by SEEC, it’s always downtown gives most money then our of seattle, that is, folks working downtown with paid parking with a home address in medina or redmond or bellevue with businesses downtown; using their personal check instead of their business checkbook. then only a couple of other neighborhoods are significant mainly cap hill and queen anne…also full of some richer folks. Many of these richer folks are liberals, so we mushy liberals on the council. NONE of them are blue collar, so we never get true progressive politics out of cour concil. bike lanes yes, but DBT wasting billions also yes. Massive subsidies for sympony and construction projects, most everything is focused downtown, for example, they will pay a couple of million for a street to be made into a park in belltown, but we don’t fund sidewalks for your neighborhood out in the sticks. While 9 districts or 7/2 seems the most democratic in terms of returning to grass roots neighbor to neighbor politics, that is, being able to win by doorbelling and without having to spend four hours a day dilaing for dollars, the power structure will call it too radical a change so it’s best to go with five/four.
4. at some point we have to recognize that voters simply can be overwhelmed with too many candidates to learn about. when you elect multiple judges, superior and district and muni court, also nine councilmembers and county council and three state legislators etc. plus the federal and other offices, really, most voters cannot deal with having 100 people running for all these lower level offices so reducing the voter’s choice from 9 council slots meaning 4 one cycle and 6 the other cycle leading to about …..8-30 primary candidates each cycle….well what happens is the candidate who already has name id tends to win, Gooden comes to mind, or Steinbrueck junior, plus being not objectionable to DSA and all the downtown and big money interests. Recent exception to that would be OBrien. But really, there’s no real “lefty” on the council except him and licata, the rest are very very homogenous and united in their uniformity of views which boil down to this: pay lip service to environmentalism and all things liberal while never rocking the boat with business and developers. Districts would at least allow more folks on the council who are not beholden to those huge donor lists. To sum up, at large means “they represent the campaign donor lists and the system is built on dialing for dollars.”
If we can’t go districts, a reform that might work is to require how many hours a day they are dialing for dollars to be disclosed, and also bar them from doing it during work hours. Perhaps even disclose who they called, because a politician using the “developers list” is possibly promising things to developers even if not all of them give. Another reform would be you cannot donate if you have any business at all pending before the city such as permit applications, contracts, etc. The degree to which landowners and large contractors are involved is incredible.
districter @13 — whew; just too much. Please get your thoughts in order before hitting the keyboard.
A footnote: Seattle is a growing city, and many newcomers are from cities where councils are elected by district. It’s not an alien concept to those folks, like it may be to longtime Seattleites living with the all-at-large system since the 1911 city charter.
Seattle is a large and diverse city, and it would be better to have that diversity better represented on city council. Districts would be an important step in that direction.
And I’m glad someone pointed out Cambridge Massachusetts, the last American city with proportional representation using the single transferable vote. That system has the benefit of allowing people with minority viewpoints to get elected from a citywide constituency, one not concentrated into a single district.
What 13 said.
@14, my rant would have gone on longer, hitting the same points, consider ourselves lucky that I didn’t have to write it.
@6, don’t know how Goldy got to 5, but I got to 5 by major waterway, freeway.
You could break it into 9. That is my actual preference, and break it up by school district high school attendance map. The city would never go for that, but that is actually closer to how I think it should be.
If the city really wanted to support neighborhoods then it would align with where the school district lines are, they might even pay some attention to those neighborhoods, and there would be no mystery as to who to contact. Right now they shuffle the deck by function and committee, that is stupid. There is no good reason to not be able to represent a neighborhood and have function as the chairperson if a particular city function, none.
http://www.seattleschools.org/.....rea_hs.htm
EvergreenRailfan is right on. If you want diversity – look into a proportional or semi-proportional system. But this is Washington and there could very well be antagonism against anything this progressive. Even Democrats will come out against it. (Good thing Greg Nickels didn’t lose his election in an RCV race.)
A big challenge is voter education, and at the same time, getting the insiders to not oppose it. STV is sophisticated and but check out this demonstration. It’s kinda cute – and they mistakenly refer to STV as IRV / RCV, but there’s a difference. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....re=channel
STV takes the sophistication out of the hands of the people who draw districts and gives that to voters themselves.
So many acronyms, I know!
I let my curiosity get the better of me, and followed via the podcsst, the Australian Election. Although some oddities of the IRV used in the House of Representatives, is that they require every box marked, although in Queensland and New South Wales State elections it is optional preferences.
I love how it is used for elections to the lower house of the Irish Parliament(I am not going to try the Gaelic spelling of it), and when there is a vacancy to fil, they just use a special election with IRV.
Minnesota might become the first to try IRV Statewide in this century at least. St. Paul will be using it for their next municipal elections, Minneapolis already uses it, and talk of adopting it in Duluth, and Red Wing as well. One issue that may help it, is the continuing influence of Jesse Ventura’s Independence Party in key statewide elections. The past two terms, Pawlenty won with less than 51%, and this time around, Mark Dayton won it for the DFL with less than 51%. Ventura only won in 1998 with around 37% of the vote. Our current system with Top Two, which had been for Municipal Elections for years prior to the Top Two primary, at least gaurentees a majority.
No proposals statewide in Minnesota yet, just a few op-eds, but judging from the past couple years, might be a good place to go with it statewide. In 2008 for Senate, they had the contentious recount, and almost the same with the 2010 recount. The Independence Party won a good chunk in this year’s governors race, so they will retain ballot status.
North Carolina did a statewide IRV last November for a vacancy election. It worked well. The state election officials were open minded about it.
Also, Port Chester NY had an at-large election with Cumulative Voting (CV). This resulted from a Voting RIghts Act lawsuit. Instead of a Majority-Minority district, the council was elected with CV. Lani Guineir has some interesting criticisms of the single-member district and the Voting RIghts Act. Check out her book The Tyranny of the Majority.
Pierce County Washington tried RCV/IRV and the situation was bad. It was attacked from every angle. But I must say that RCV proponents made mistakes also. Here’s a study by leading political scientists that reveals it actually worked quite well http://washingtonpoll.org/pdf/rank_choice.pdf.
If you want a glimpse of some of the antagonism election reform gets, check out this Media Matters piece on the CV election in Port Chester http://mediamatters.org/research/201006160053
RCV is gaining traction in places like Oakland and SF CA. And indeed Minnesota is promising. We’ll see how the discussion of proportional voting, different than single-seat RCV/IRV, fits in with the upcoming redistricting. It promises to be a solution to any contention over political boundaries.
I tried re-districting Seattle into 5 wards based off your recommendation (Central, NE, NW, SE, SW) but unfortunately the southern half of the city simply doesn’t have enough people for this to work nicely, resulting in weird splits around Beacon Hill and Rainier Valley, as well as much of central Seattle (Capitol Hill, First Hill) having to be moved into the southern wards to give them enough population. Map: http://img51.imageshack.us/img.....wards3.png
I also tried 9 wards, and the city actually divided much more nicely in this case: http://img593.imageshack.us/im.....ewards.png