Dear George,

I encourage everyone to express their opinions to the Ward System Study Committee (or whatever they are calling it). If I have an opportunity, I will do so to a public hearing, but I'd like to set forth my thoughts here.

First, after studying the matter on and off for over 20 years, I can't think of any significant problem that the ward system will solve, and I believe that it will cause many more problems than it will solve. My opposition is not based on partisan concerns; I believe that Democrats will continue to dominate Charlottesville politics no matter what the governmental structure is, as long as we nominate moderately progressive, honest, hard-working candidates. When I look at the suggestion of having a ward system and a directly elected mayor, I keep thinking, "Why are we in such a rush to emulate Richmond and the District of Columbia? What is it about Richmond and D.C. that we find worthy of duplication here?"

Second, the notion that wards would mean that Republicans would get elected to City Council, or that Democrats would lose their numerical advantage, is not borne out by the numbers. I looked back at the last 25 years of election data to see if there was ever a time that a candidate who did not win the City nevertheless won in one of the wards as they are now constituted. The answer is "Yes, once." BUT -- that candidate did not win in his home ward. He would not have been eligible to run in the ward that he won. That candidate was Tom Hill in 1992, who would have been elected from the ward that is Recreation and Clark precincts -- but he lived in Walker precinct.

The reality is that Charlottesville is a fairly uniformly Democratic city. According to the ratings of the National Committee for an Effective Congress, the LEAST Democratic precinct is Walker, which is listed as a 60% Democratic precinct.

Going to wards will not automatically mean electoral success for Republicans, nor will it automatically mean electoral failure for Democrats.

Third, when we looked at the ward issue after the 1980 census, the conclusion was that if we went to wards, we would have serious problems with the federal Voting Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act has been interpreted to mean that we would need to create a ward that was more than 60% African-American, so that an African-American would stand a solid chance of getting elected. In 1980, the only way to create a "majority-minority" district with four wards would have been to create a truly ugly spider in the center of the City -- something that would become the new poster child for ugly gerrymandering. I therefore concluded that we would have needed to go to at least 6 wards, not the 4 that folks were proposing then (and now).

And as Charlottesville's housing patterns have become less rigidly segregated (good news!), it would now be more difficult, I am convinced, to "gerrymander" a majority-minority ward. I disagree with the philosophical premise of the "majority-minority" definition, but it is the law, and we have to abide by it. And it would be very difficult for us to do so.

Related to the concern for compliance with the Voting Rights Act is the reality that we would now have to be concerned every ten years with redistricting. We have seen in recent years how politicians on both sides of the aisle have manipulated statistics and polling data to create "safe" seats -- in the Congressional races this year, only a handful of seats will truly be in contest. And many of those redistricting proposals have led to litigation (which gets expensive, even when you are right) under the U.S. Constitution, the Virginia Constitution, and the Voting Rights Act. Why do we want to be going down this path?

Finally, there has been talk about how difficult it is for some people to run for City Council. I don't know how the Republicans do things, but as for Democrats, all that we have ever asked of our candidates is that they put in to the campaign as much time a week as we would expect them to put in as Councilors. We don't require our candidates to make any financial contribution to the election campaign. Most conscientious City Councilors will tell you that they put in about 20 hours a week at that job. We Democrats ask our candidates to plan on campaigning for 20 hours a week from March through the first Monday in May. That requires some rearranging of schedules, and not everyone can do it, but then not everyone can afford the time to serve on City Council.

The most important thing that candidates can do is to go door-to-door through as much of the City as they can manage. Most candidates who have put in the 20 hours a week have found that they are able to hit most of the households during the course of a campaign. The candidates who have done so -- who have actually met the voters -- have fared well at the polls.

The history of the ward system as a political issue in Charlottesville is interesting.

The push for the ward system in the early 1980's was not primarily a Republican issue. The real impetus for the ward system in the 1980's was a schism in the African-American community. The African-American community was divided between those who were active in the Democratic Party -- folks like Drewary Brown and Grace and Robert Tinsley -- and those who were not -- folks like the late Virginia Carrington. In the mid-1980's there was a battle going on over who would run the local NAACP; the schism was between the same two factions. Those who were not active in the Democratic Party tried to use the NAACP as their base for local power, and they also backed Margaret Cain of the Citizen's Party for Council in 1984. The African-Americans who were active in the Citizen's Party, and who backed the ward system, saw the issue in terms that would have to be regarded as somewhat radical -- they felt that the only African-Americans being put forward by the Democratic establishment were ones who were acceptable to the white power structure, and so a ward system was necessary so that the African-American community could choose one of their own as a Councilor without input or control from whites who controlled the Democratic Party. The Republicans joined the battle, because they saw the ward system as a way to minimize the impact of the African-American voting bloc on the rest of Council. If one ward was a majority-minority ward, the other three would be almost entirely white, and the Republicans thought they'd have a better chance in those three wards. That plan was defeated, amid much bitter wrangling.

The perception in 2004 is that the ward system is being pushed by the Republicans, who see a ward system as their best chance to elect some City Councilors. As I noted above, I don't think that is going to turn out to be true, at least as long as the Democrats nominate good candidates. In any event, I know that there are Democrats who favor a ward system also. In some cases, they see a situation where a local favorite could not get the Democratic nomination in a City-wide convention. For example, I know that some friends and supporters of Meredith Richards were upset by the fact that she was not renominated, whereas she presumably would have been if we had had a ward system. Others have talked about the fact that very few Councilors have come from the south side of town. At least with the current boundaries, there is only one ward -- the ward that includes Jefferson Park and Tonsler -- that is primarily south of Main Street. And that ward had two Councilors over the last 8 years -- Meredith Richards and Maurice Cox. Before that, Tom Vandever, from Clark Precinct, was on Council. And Bitsy Waters, living in Alumni Hall, also lived south of Main Street.

The fact is that where our Councilors come from has been something of a random walk. Since 1982, all 8 of the precincts have had representation at one time or another. Recently, Carver and Recreation have been over-represented. Back in the 1980's, Walker seemed to be over-represented. The only area that has been consistently under-represented has been the west side of town -- the ward that is made up of Venable and Alumni Hall has not had anyone on Council since Bitsy went off in 1992. One participant in a meeting noted that the Meadows has not had someone on Council -- if you make the neighborhoods sufficiently small, the same can be said of many areas in the City. For example, Locust Grove -- the area north of the bypass on Locust Avenue (an area that is larger and more populous than the Meadows) -- has never had anyone elected from there either. The same can be said for Fifeville.

That just means that those folks need to get active.

I don't impugn the motives of anyone who supports a ward system, but I think that those who support a ward system would do this debate great assistance if they were to answer the following questions:

1. State precisely, in one sentence, the problem (or problems) that you think a ward system would solve.
2. State precisely how you believe that a ward system would solve those problems.
3. State what alternatives to a ward system you have considered in an effort to find a solution to those problems, and why you reject them.

Lloyd Snook (electronic mail, September 14, 2004)