Our Voice: Lawmakers must push through new voting law

Despite the obvious need for a legislative fix, efforts to help cities comply with federal voting laws have stalled year after year.

This must not happen again.

A Senate committee hearing on the Washington Voting Rights Act of 2018 is scheduled for Wednesday, Jan. 10 at 8 a.m. If approved, the measure would allow city officials to change how they run council elections without first getting sued by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Just ask Pasco city leaders what a no-win situation that is.

A change in state law would have saved them the time and expense of cooperating with a federal lawsuit, but the Legislature let them down, so they had no choice but to go to court.

It was a shame because Pasco city officials had tried to do the right thing from the start.

They saw the writing on the wall back in 2012 when the ACLU sued the city of Yakima because of its at-large voting districts and citywide voting system.

Lawyers for the civil-rights group claimed that when council members are elected at-large, it dilutes the voting rights of minority groups like Yakima’s large Latino population.

Yakima city officials fought the lawsuit to no avail, and Pasco took note.

Pasco used to have five city council positions represented by voting districts and two at-large positions. Voters were limited by district in the primary election, but in the general election, the vote went citywide.

When Pasco officials looked into changing the system to avoid being sued like Yakima, they found state law prohibited them from using a district-only voting method in the general election.

They had hoped the Legislature would change the law so they could avoid going to federal court.

But lawmakers let them down. Legislation was introduced that would have helped Pasco, but it ended up going nowhere.

So the ACLU sued the city and Pasco cooperated.

Once a federal judge ruled that Pasco’s voting system for city council was unconstitutional, city officials could finally make the changes they had wanted before the lawsuit.

It was frustrating and costly that Pasco had to welcome a lawsuit in order to make the switch to district-only voting.

All city council seats in Pasco were up for election last November. Mayor Matt Watkins seat remained at-large, but the rest of the city council was elected by districts.

Of the seven positions, voters chose five new members — two of them Latino — and the election attracted more Latino candidates than ever before.

While many argue that elected city officials must represent the entire city — not just their own neighborhood — it is important for city council members to reflect the community each one serves. District-only voting helps achieve that.

We don’t have to look far to see how important it is that the Legislature pass Senate Bill 6002, the new state Voting Rights Act.

It’s too late to help Pasco, but it isn’t too late to help other cities if state lawmakers will finally act on this issue.

This story was originally published January 10, 2018 at 12:25 PM with the headline "Our Voice: Lawmakers must push through new voting law."