Local News

Washington state lawmakers heard testimony Thursday on legislation to make it easier for minorities to get elected to local government posts.

The bill is modeled on the California Voting Rights Act, enacted in 2002, which encourages court challenges to cities, counties and school districts to push them to switch from at-large to district elections in areas where large minority groups are present.

Minority-rights advocates at a House committee hearing spoke in favor of the bill.

"The numbers paint one picture, and that picture is grim," said David Perez, assistant director of the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality, who helped draft the bill. "It's time now to restore our democracy and restore local control."

The federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 invites court challenges to an election system that prevents protected minorities from meaningfully influencing election outcomes. Federal courts have in recent years limited the law's reach by raising the standard to create gerrymandered majority-minority districts.

The Washington legislation would make it easier to prove that such districts are necessary. Unlike the federal law, it wouldn't require proof that the underrepresented minority group within an election area lives in a geographically contiguous zone.

"It is reinforcing the federal Voting Rights Act with clarifications that make it more fair," said Matt Barreto, an associate professor of political science at the University of Washington whose statistical analysis of so-called racially polarized voting has been used in cases brought in California.

Last December, the Cerritos Community College District in southern California voluntarily changed its trustee elections from an at-large to a district system after Barreto's analysis showed it likely ran afoul of state law.

In contrast to the California act, the proposed Washington legislation would apply to both at-large and district elections, making it harder to carve up minority voting blocs into several districts.

If passed into law, a plaintiff could use census data and election results to show that an unsuccessful minority candidate for local office would likely win if running in a district made up largely of the person's minority group.

Such proof could be used to demand a new election, a change from at-large to district-based representation, and payment of the plaintiff's attorney's fees.

Proponents of the bill say that Washington state's minority groups, and in particular Hispanics, are badly underrepresented at the local level.

They point to Adams and Franklin counties, which are about 50 percent Hispanic but in 2009 had a combined eight Hispanic elected officials of 247 overall, a study by former Whitman College student Zachary Duffy found.

Another example they cite is Yakima, which is 41 percent Hispanic but has never elected a Hispanic member to its at-large city council. Proponents of the bill say changing to district elections would all but ensure Hispanic representation on the council.