How Salem's election rules disenfranchise minorities

[John Gear]

http://www.psmag.com/navigation/politics-and-law/fergusons-missouri-city-council-black-white-race-different-88564/

Salem, like Ferguson, effectively uses districting and a weird election schedule for nonpartisan elections to produce an all-white or nearly all white councils time after time. Change black to Hispanic and you could be describing Salem here:

Why are the residents of Ferguson, Missouri—a majority of whom are black—represented by a local government that is almost entirely white? This question has preoccupied a few scholars and journalists since last week. On Friday, Brian Schaffner, Wouter Van Erve, and Ray LaRaja wrote an interesting post at the Monkey Cage that looked at these disparities and suggested that it was largely due to two factors: 1) the timing of local elections (Ferguson’s city council elections are held in April of odd-numbered years), and 2) the non-partisan nature of local elections there. Both of these factors tend to depress turnout substantially, and seem to depress turnout disproportionately among African Americans. Over at Slate, Jordan Weissmann explained that the poverty and relative transience common among black communities in the inner-ring suburbs of the South makes them far less likely to turn out in local elections.

What Salem should use is a single election, in November, at-large (no wards that diminish minority voting power), where all candidates run in one race and all city voters rank their preferences 1, 2, 3, and so on. This system is already specifically enshrined in the Oregon Constitution.