Commissioner elections at-large

The Spokesman-Review needs a tutorial on the difference between at-large and district elections. Board of county commissioners election systems in place for decades involve primaries in which the two top finishers (one from each party pre-2008) in one or more of three districts go on to general elections.

However, general elections are countywide, at-large elections, not district elections.

S-R assertions that expanding the board to five might result in districts not splitting the city of Spokane, thus creating positions to which Democrats might be elected couldn’t be more off-base. Until at-large general elections for the board are replaced with purely district general elections (or Republican politics finally disgust voters countywide), enlarging it to five will simply turn into a right-wing corporatists’ full-employment initiative. It might as well be shrunken to two members.

The Voting Rights Act targeted at-large elections because they dilute minority voters’ representation in central city neighborhoods. Progressives need to wise up and challenge at-large general elections in court.

Let’s hope they act before the expansion scheme gives real estate developers an even greater local politics stranglehold. In district elections, expanded government councils and commissions always make government more small-d democratic. In at-large elections, those expansions are shamelessly phony.

Robert Ethington

Spokane