All Souls

382 words written by dylan
Posted November 02, 2003 @ 10:54 PM
2 comments

Today is my middle brother's birthday -- he's now in the waning year of his 20s. Happy happy to him.

Tuesday is Election Day in Seattle, and it's time to elect half the city council. Unlike other more sensible and reasonable cities, Seattle's council members are all at-large -- no wards or districts. A great system in, say, a town of 50,000, but gridlock-inducing in a city of 500,000. So, for the third time in the last 15 years or so, there's a citizen's intiative to junk the at-large setup and create nine districts which would each elect one council member. Finally, if you have a problem in your neighborhood, you'll have one person to call, one person to fire if they are unresponsive. Every other large city in this country does it this way, and it works quite well. It's reasonable. It's sensible.

And since it's reasonable and sensible, just about everyone in power in this city is against it. You get editorials like this one in the P-I bemoaning the "lack of diversity" in district elections and how much more diverse the Seattle city council has been with at-large elections. What they don't mention is that there was a long period when there was no council member residing north of the Ship Canal -- an area where a majority of the city lives. There is no council member who lives west of Aurora and north of the Canal now, an area that includes Ballard, Fremont, Wallingford, Green Lake, Phinney Ridge... in essence, the residential core of the city. There are no council members who reside in West Seattle, none who reside anywhere near Rainier Beach or Georgetown or White Center. There has been a black council member for years, but that's because there's this "understanding" that seat #8 is the "black seat." Anyway, this is Seattle, one of the most liberal cities in America, and this means the council would have a large amount of racial and ethnic diversity even if you gerrymandered every district to make the conditions for a nine white male council possible.

So, the charter amendment will go down in flames on Tuesday. But, then, this is Seattle, a town where decisions aren't nearly as important as getting input from at least 2000 community groups first.

Comments

  1. Seattle has all at-large districts? I thought that was highly unconstitutional.

    I guess I was confusing the Constitution with the Voting Rights Act, which doesn't cover the state of Washington. Here in Texas, single-member districts are required by judicial fiat.

    Posted by: chris | November 4, 2003 11:34 PM

  2. In the case of Seattle, they're apparently not, probably because the city has a long history of electing minorities to the Council despite the at-large status. I think (based on an eyeball of the map) about 50% of the Seattle's population lives more than two miles in any direction from a council member's home.

    Seattle (and Washington state) hasn't had the disenfranchisement problems that Texas has had. It helps that all city elected positions are non-partisan, and that the state government, while paralyzed in most issues, gets on pretty well when it comes to redistricting. Three seats are GOP, two seats are Dems, and the other four flip-flop around a lot (they're in the Puget Sound suburbs).

    Posted by: dw | November 5, 2003 12:41 PM