Community groups got together at the Seattle University Law School on January 30, 2012 to celebrate the creation of a new Congressional District in which racial and ethnic minorities will form more than 50% of the population. CAIR-WA was represented at the gathering by Executive Director Arsalan Bukhari, accompanied by Journalism Volunteer Shijith Kunhitty.
The first such ‘majority-minority’ Congressional District in Washington, the 9th Congressional District would be comprised by South-East Seattle, S. King County, Bellevue and North-East Tacoma. (See map) The Congressional District had come about as a result of the growth in population in Washington State which meant the state would be assigned an additional Congressional seat. Learning about this development, community groups got together under the leadership of the coalition United for Fair Representation to persuade the Washington State Redistricting Commission , which is responsible for redrawing the boundaries every 10 years, to create a majority-minority district.
With a majority-minority district, the expectation is that minority candidates would stand a better chance of getting elected. George Cheung, executive director of the Win/Win network, gives his rationale for supporting the campaign. “We have a winner-takes-all (electoral) system where we set one group against the other …The system is set up to keep people in power and decides (all sorts of policy) outcomes for the next 10 years. (We wanted to) advance a redistricting plan that benefits the communities we represent.”
Efforts to bring round the redistricting commission included submitting letters and petitions to the commission as well as mobilizing people from different ethnicities to give testimony at public redistricting forums across the state. “Operating as a multi-ethnic coalition was very important… We got to show that we have political muscle and that we can use it.” All the hard work came to fruition with the redistricting commission approving a plan with a new majority-minority district on January 1, 2012.
Apart from the new Congressional District, there was also a new majority-minority Legislative District (LD) created in South King County (the 33rd LD) This is the fourth majority-minority legislative district in Washington with two already in South King county (11th LD and 37thLD) and one in Yakima county (15thLD).
The coalition, however, is not content to rest on its success and is already planning ahead. “We shouldn’t think about goals regarding the next election, we need to think in a 10-year timeframe,” said George, “We need to chip away at voter registration and voter turnout.” Voter registration, in particular, is a significant challenge with only six per cent of the 650,000 minority members in the state registered to vote.
In terms of getting more minority candidates into office though, coalition members were a little more circumspect and conceded that the creation of a majority-minority district would not result in a change in political leadership immediately. This is because the district wasn’t created as an open seat but one with an existing non-minority incumbent who would be difficult to vote out. Apart from the specific case of the 9th Congressional District though, chances of a sea change in politics in a wider sense through a rush of minority candidates would be unlikely as well, given the dearth of qualified candidates capable of running an effective campaign and winning. This in turn, could be partly attributed to the scarcity of such candidates going through the baptism of city politics.
The fact is that local electoral systems in much of the state seem designed to keep it that way too. At present, positions in city council or county office are decided by at-large electoral systems, which means that the whole city or county would decide on each and every candidate. So if people were to vote for candidates most similar to them in ethnicity or race, minority candidates would never get elected because of the lack of votes across the city to get a majority. This would result in an extreme lack of diversity in representation, the example given by the Fair Representation Coalition on how in 10 counties across Central or Eastern Washington, Latinos comprise 33 % of the population but only occupy 3% of public offices. A district-based electoral system on the other hand, would allow for political subdivisions of the city to elect their own candidates and could potentially allow for more minority candidates to be elected.
The coalition is looking to address this problem through a campaign to get legislation enacted that could lead to a change in electoral systems in many cities. The legislation in question, the Washington Voting Rights Act, (House version | Senate version) would allow for people to challenge a voting system (at-large or district-based) if there is a pattern of it denying-- to borrow the obtuse language of the bill-- “an equal opportunity for a protected class to elect candidates of its choice or an equal opportunity to influence the outcome of an election as a result of the vote dilution of voters who are members of a protected class.” David Perez, Assistant Director of the Korematsu Center for Law and Equality at Seattle University acknowledges the long-term impact of this under-representation of minorities in city politics. “It is in these local elections you learn how to campaign, (and build up the capacity and capability to run for higher office) but because the pipeline is clogged, (not enough people are coming through). The WA Voting Rights act would be a game changer.”
