Who Gets the Most Votes? Rethinking Representation

The Ontario County Board of Elections posted vote counts on their website for the Geneva City Council Elections, held November 6, 2007.
The actual make-up of the new Geneva City Council, in order by position in the total votes received is:

1. O’Malley (councilor-at-large)
2. Einstein (mayor)
3. Alcock (councilor-at-large)
8. Valentino (councilor, ward 3)
9. D’Amico (councilor, ward 2)
11. Augustine (councilor, ward 1)
12. Cosentino (councilor, ward 4)
15. Greco (councilor, ward 6)
16. Hagerman (councilor, ward 5)

The Mayoral race, with three candidates, and the at-large seats, with four, are an accurate representation of residents’ priorities around the city, but if you were to order the ward councilors by percentage of support within the ward (votes received/votes cast), the rank order would be:

1. Greco (unopposed)
2. Valentino (70% of ward voters)
3. Augustine (65% of ward voters)
4. Hagerman (62% of ward voters)
5. D’Amico (60% of ward voters)
6. Cosentino (52% of ward voters)

This is not merely an exercise in numbers. What it illustrates is the disparity in ward mapping. Every 10 years a US Census is conducted, and the Geneva City Charter
states (sec. 2.11) that “as soon as practicable” thereafter, “the City Council shall review the results of such census with the existing wards and districts of the City to determine if a new plan of apportionment should be adopted.”

When it comes to Council votes, each of the nine members of Council gets one vote, which means that, regardless of the number of votes they received in the election, they each got a seat on Council and they each get the same number of votes on Council, namely one. It means, also, that candidates who received more votes than some seated members of Council get no votes on Council, because they were not seated (for example, Dowd who did not win a seat for the second ward, received more votes in total than Augustine received in winning a seat in the first ward).

Another way of describing these features of our local government is that there is no proportional representation on Council. Proportional representation means, in general, there is a correlation between votes received (the voters) and seats won (the representation). Councilor Greco, for example, ran unopposed and received a total of 207 votes, yet he is seated on Council and is entitled to the same one vote on Council as Councilor O’Malley, who ran against three opponents and received a total of 1,530 votes. Greco and O’Malley both have the same weight in voting on city business as any other member, including Mayor Einstein.

To balance representation, the City might re-draw the ward boundaries so that each of the six wards has approximately the same number of residents. Another possibility would be to keep ward boundaries intact, but weight votes according to the number of residents represented by each seat. Members of Council who represent more residents would be entitled to a more heavily weighted vote on Council. Weighted voting is a feature of the Ontario County Board of Supervisors.

Immediately following the 2000 Census, Augustine suggested that Council take up the charge issued in the Charter. With the first, fourth, and fifth wards home to some of the oldest housing in the City, populations within those boundaries are not likely to vary much. However, other areas of the city have experienced significant new construction since the adoption of ward boundaries (which predates the 1960s-era city charter). However, that was the first year of a new council, and the search for a new city manager--Rich Rising-- was underway, so that work order didn’t make the cut.

We are not suggesting that the council take up the reapportionment issue immediately, however, the next decennial census is on the horizon (only 2 years away) which means that the reapportionment discussion could potentially take place in 2011, an election year. To avoid any partisan-driven decision-making (or even the appearance of such) it might be wise for the Council to take up the issue sooner, based on the 2000 data and projections of what 2010 will find.