by Brian King
Most people in Seattle, like Americans in general, assume that the system of elections we have here enables us to elect our leaders democratically. The average person would probably cite problems such as excessive campaign spending or maybe the disgusting attack ads more and more commonly seen during political campaigns as things that need to be fixed, but not as problems that call into question the basic democratic fairness of our voting system. This may be changing.
In the last couple of years, two local groups have been organizing with an eye toward placing two separate initiatives on the Seattle ballot. Either one of these ballot measures, if passed, would fundamentally alter the method used to elect our city council. Both groups claim that their initiative would greatly enhance the representative fairness of the system, as well as increase voter participation in the campaign & turnout on election day.
Citizens for a Community Based City Council seeks to pass an amendment to the city charter to establish that council members be elected by districts, instead of at-large, from the entire city. Citizens for Proportional Representation is working to amend the city charter so that council members are determined by a method commonly used in Europe called Proportional Representation (PR).
Representatives from both groups feel that our current system of at-large voting leads to a politically-uniform group of individuals on the council who are to a great extent beholden to downtown interests. Pam Roats, from Citizens for a Community Based City Council, believes that the main problem with our current system is "a lack of accountability to the average voter in Seattle on the part of present city council members".
Roats also points out that electing council members by district would ensure representatives from all areas of the city, as well as make it a lot more feasible for a person without support from wealthy contributors to win election, since the districts would be a ninth the size of the whole town. Roats' group has about 10% of the approximately 30,000 signatures needed to place their proposal on the ballot for this coming November. She feels like they have a good chance of qualifying their proposal in time for the fall election and says help circulating petitions is definitely welcome.
Members of Citizens for Proportional Representation (CPR) seek a change in the city charter as well. Their proposal calls for determining who is elected to the city council by a system called "Preference Voting." This method would fundamentally change the way we're used to electing people to public office here in Seattle. CPR representatives Jerry Lovchik and Janet Anderson told the Free Press that this change in our way of electing public officials would lead to a feeling on the part of the average voter that her/his vote counts much more. "Proportional voting, under most circumstances is far more democratic than our current winner-take-all system", according to Lovchik.
Lovchick and Anderson believe the big problem with our current system is the fact that it takes 51% of votes cast city-wide to gain a seat on our city council. The 49% of the electorate on the losing side are frozen out of the process, with no representation. Proportional voting gets around this by requiring, in the case of our city council, only 11% of the votes to win each of the nine seats up for election. Each voter would list, by order of preference, her/his choices for city council. If your first choice candidate received the required 11% for election, her votes would then be distributed to the candidates marked as second choices on the rest of the ballots listing her as first choice. As each winner achieved the necessary 11%, the process would continue until 9 candidates had been chosen by the voters.
"The key concept here is that you vastly increase the value of each individual vote with PR" said Lovchick. "This helps explain why countries that practice PR, like Norway, Germany, Denmark and many others, have such high turnouts at the polls, in the 80 -90% range. People feel as though their vote really counts. Now that's real democracy."
Asked about the common criticism that PR is just to complicated for the average voter to understand, Lovchik said; "The overwhelming majority of democratic countries in the world today practice one form or another of PR. I think our voters are just as smart as any others. Stephanie Summers and I ran for city council seats in the last election, primarily as a means of popularizing PR. I received 21% of the 120,000 votes cast and Stephanie got about 26%. Everywhere we spoke, we were well received. I think our votes represented people here in Seattle who understand PR and think it's a pretty good idea."
With luck, Seattle's voters should have the chance to vote in favor of either district elections or PR on next fall's ballot. Both would probably lessen Downtown influence on the city council. Neighborhoods would gain in influence. Presently underrepresented groups like the poor, unemployed, youth, environmentalists and racial minorities would stand a good chance of having a voice in our public affairs if PR was the voters' choice. If both measures are approved, there will be a run-off between the two in the next election.
To assist the campaigns, contact the following:
- Citizens for Proportional Representation: 233-8509
- Citizens for a Community Based City Council: 525-4872
WAfreepress@gmail.com
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Contents on this page were published in the February/March, 1995 edition of the Washington Free Press.
WFP, 1463 E. Republican #178, Seattle, WA -USA, 98112. -- WAfreepress@gmail.com
Copyright © 1995 WFP Collective, Inc.