Imagine a ward without Fred…
Ward 6, that is. Did you know that two-time incumbent Fred Ronstadt never won his own city ward? And yet he’s the Ward 6 councilmember. This happened because of our 75-year-old contorted city elections process whereby only Ward 6 voters vote in the September primary, but the whole city gets to vote in the November general election.
Here’s the way the Star editorial writers put it on Sunday, 4/17:
Ronstadt likes how we do it now because it allows him to be elected. He says: “We have a pretty good hybrid system, where the ward nominates but there’s accountability to the whole city. We avoid parochialism that way.”
We also avoid logic. In this case, we regard parochialism as desirable: A council representative being not only nominated by the ward, but also elected by ward voters. Such parochialism, which Ronstadt apparently finds undesirable, means voters know exactly to whom they should turn for action. What Ronstadt calls parochialism is in truth accountability and responsibility. It’s the product of ward elections.
There’s a very enthusiastic science teacher named Jim Sinex who is now circulating petitions to make our system more rational, and more accountable to constituents, by instituting ward-only primary and general elections.
This way, the person each ward votes for is the person they get as a councilmember. They know where to turn for help on a City issue, and the councilmember is responsible for the interests of the ward. The power of money in campaigns would be dramatically reduced–a council candidate could walk door to door and meet literally each voter in the ward, something that cannot happen in a citywide election where expensive mass media like TV, radio, and direct mail have inordinate sway.
And most importantly, we avoid the tyranny of the majority that results when large and growing sections of the city can dictate who represents the rest of the city.
It’s way past time that we had ward-only elections. While we can’t change the system for this campaign, you can help Jim collect the signatures to change things for the next time around. As a veteran of a successful city petition drive, I know that he will need all the help he can get. You can contact him at fairelect@cox.net.
April 25th, 2005 at 2:35 am
Why take a step back with ward only elections when we can take steps forward, instead? I agree the the current system does not hold council members accountable to their ward. But when we have a universe of electoral systems to choose from that are clearable by the Justice Department, lots of practical examples around the country of creative electoral solutions for city elections, and the expertise of a great political science faculty right at the University, I find it rather disappointing that we can’t do better than going back to the bad old days of ward only elections. Surely, we can do better.
April 25th, 2005 at 9:57 am
I’m a great believer in choosing the simpler solution to achieve the desired goal. And given the increasingly untraceable nature of electoral technology thanks to Diebold, etc., I’d rather not place my faith in new electoral techonology to solve our issues.
I don’t know of a less rational system in the country than Tucson’s status quo. If you used that system to elect Members of Congress, then each congressional district would vote in its own primary, and then the whole state would vote for all the congressmembers in the general election. Any accountability there? Any Tucsonans want Phoenicians to choose our representatives?
One of the main benefits to ward-only is the ability of a candidate to actually meet every voter in a ward, something you can’t do citywide. That means that you can win an election without resorting to expensive methods like TV, radio, or direct mail. The effect of money is dramatically reduced, and accountability is dramatically increased.
Ward only works all over the country. It’s understandable to everyone, and it’s fair. It’s time.
April 26th, 2005 at 12:16 pm
I wasn’t actually refering to tallying and vote recording technology, but rather to the system of elections used, so Diebold and their ilk don’t enter into it. My comment was directed to the use of electoral systesm such as Choice Voting, IRV, Borda and Condorcet voting, etc. My biggest concern about ward only elections is that by definition one disenfranchises 49% of voters, possibly more, and encourages a monopoly by the two major parties. Likely, racial minorities will not be underrepresented in Tucson by ward only, but many others, including Republicans (believe it or not, I do care about that…) and independents and third parties, are likely to be marginalized.
Single member plurality districting systems are notoriously brutal to minorities, and while I can see many of the benefits of going back to ward only, I think we may be able to capture many of those benefits without ward only’s draw-backs by looking at systems that may not be so familiar to people. Comfort and familiarity are positive attributes of an electoral system, but they shouldn’t be the highest good. Our highest good should be to accurately capture the full range and intensity of political preferences of the constituency, and encourage cooperation and accountability among elected officials. I’m not sure that ward only does all those things very well, though it does do some of them.
In addition, I lean toward the opinion that non-ideological administration of cities is the ideal toward which we should strive. I believe that there is an objectively determinable ‘collective good’ in city governance. As such, a political system that tends to reward ideological conformity to party lines and encourage polarity of the electorate, which I believe single member plurality districting does, is not ideal for the governance of a city. Systems which emphasize coalition building over bare majorities, which supress the power of the money and influence of vested economic interests, and which tend to prevent rent-seeking behavior and transfering private costs onto the public, are preferable in city elections. I don’t see returning to ward only elections as directly addressing any of those concerns. Rather, it is easily characterized as a fairly transparent and venal attempt by Democrats to re-assert partisan advantage in city elections. I rather suspect that many voters might see it the same way and there could be a backlash. Given the actions of some Republican council members, I can see how reclaiming partisan advantage for Democrats might seem a fairly good proxy for the public welfare. But it is not, really. I think Democratic candidates should give this issue more thought, and present the public with more impartially justified alternatives, before heeding the siren call of ward only elections.
April 26th, 2005 at 2:09 pm
Mosts of your points are well taken, Michael, and I do think it would be excellent if we could re-evaluate the methods by which we choose our leaders to increase the voter buy-in and decrease polarity. However, in the case of Tucson, it is far from clear that Democrats would gain a partisan advantage from ward-only elections–while we may gain Wards 3 & 6, we may lose Wards 2 & 4. It is simply an issue of fairness, simplicity, and accountability, and to my mind, the partisan outcome should have nothing to do with it.
I also disagree with the idea that we should go to non-partisan elections. I accept the premise that, yes, most local issues should be decided on a non-partisan level, but I think that human behavior, and recent political behavior in particular, shows that our leaders do not always act rationally. And simply stripping away party labels will not change that. Additionally, party labels can be a helpful indicator of the general worldview of a candidate, and whaat you might expect from that candidate. The solution is to elect leaders who refuse to put partisanship over the best interests of the community.