Legal Committee to Take Up the Weighted Vote

At Thursday night's Legal Committee meeting, Alderman John Friedman (Third Ward), who chairs the committee, presented a memorandum to the members: "A Proposed Framework for a Resolution to Transition to Constitutional Voting in the Hudson City Council." The memo begins with this statement:

In light of the analysis of both the Corporation Counsel's Office and independent scholarship (Hofstra; S. Dunn, Esq.), and in the wake of discussion of the foregoing by this Committee, this memorandum seeks to provide a framework within which discussion of a transition to voting within Constitutional norms may take place. It is my hope that by proactively engaging in this process we--the legislative body of the city--may cooperatively craft a transition to a universally acceptable manner of voting (or as close as we can realistically get to that lofty goal) that is both within Constitutional norms and avoids any potential lawsuits on the basis of the existing system's inherent flaws.

In his memo, Friedman proposes that the Legal Committee craft and the Common Council pass a resolution to put a referendum on the ballot in the November 2015 election to abandon the current weighted vote system and establish districts of equal population, hence eliminating the need for weighted votes. He presents another reason for the change, beyond the question of the constitutionality and the fear of litigation.

While ensuring that all citizens of our city are fairly represented within Constitutional norms is surely part and parcel of Council members' sworn duty, the  need for this change is necessary to ensure transparency within the legislative function. As it stands, our weighted voting system--even if it met Constitutional norms (which it clearly does not)--is confusing at best and absolutely opaque to the vast majority of the citizentry (not to mention members of the Council). Moreover, and perhaps most damning of all, its inherent weirdness (11 members sharing approximately 2200 votes in varying ratios) renders the outcomes of Council votes less than clear and, therefore, call[s] into question the validity of those outcomes; in a representative democracy this is surely an unacceptable circumstance.

Friedman goes on in his memo to make suggestions, "to spur the conversation," about how he thinks the transition could be accomplished:

• Creation of five equipopulos districts, each electing two aldermen with one vote each.
• A single at-large Council president with a single vote. 
• Creation of a commission that would be given a year to do the redistricting. 

Friedman's suggestions about the makeup of the committee are as follows:

• The chair would be nominated by the mayor on the advice and consent of two-thirds of the Council.
• Of the remaining twelve members of the commission (presumably two from each of the current six election districts), two would be named by the mayor, two would be named by the Council president, and the rest would be nominated by the mayor on the advice and consent of two-thirds of the Council. 
• The two members representing each election district cannot be of the same party.

For the superstitious, a commission of thirteen doesn't bode well, but then again our country started with thirteen colonies. A year may be more time than is necessary to work things out, since the commission would have a couple of models to work from. There is the redistricting proposed in 2003, in which the six districts of equal population were worked out by former city clerk Bonnie Colwell and current city clerk (then Colwell's assistant) Tracy Delaney.

There is also this map, based on the 2010 census figures and created by Stephen Dunn, which divides the city into the five equipopolos districts proposed by Friedman.

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