WHATCOM COUNTY COUNCIL ACTION TAKEN
December 4, 2007
OTHER ITEMS
10. Ordinance forwarding Charter Amendment 1 to the County Auditor, for inclusion on the 2008 General Election Ballot, to provide that each member of the Whatcom County Council be elected by majority vote of the registered voters of Whatcom County (AB2007-467) Adopted 6-1 Crawford Opposed, Ord.#2007-069
Jpeg and I went to the Council meeting to observe and it turned out to be well worth the trip into Bellingham.
During the public comment session, in spite of efforts by the Whatcom County Republican Party to whip up opposition, very few spoke against putting the proposed Charter Amendment on next years ballot. Those few Republicans/conservatives who did speak against it were amazingly hostile toward the Council and their arguments were just plain out-there. It seems they have a theory, based on right-wing talk radio demagoguery, that angry right-wing white-guys are an oppressed minority.
One of the angriest-guys who spoke had made the mistake of calling and emailing Barbara Brenner in advance of the meeting to expound his theory that "rural conservatives" were being discriminated against in violation of the 1965 Voter Rights Act. After his openly hostile three minute diatribe, Councilwoman Brenner responded to him. She explained that she had respected his concerns, as she does with all her constituents, and looked into it by call the Civil Right Division of the U.S. Justice Department. What she found out was that his assertions of discrimination were total malarkey... but Barbara worded it in a more diplomatic way.
I've spent some time thinking about and researching the 'conservatives' claims that (liberal) Bellingham voters unfairly dominate Whatcom County government. What I found is that they have created a mythology to explain away their lack of political success here in Whatcom County.
The actual facts are that of 102,458 registered voters in Whatcom County, only 37,652 live in the city of Bellingham. That's 37.75% of Whatcom County's voters. I don't know how many of those Bellingham voters are 'liberals', but a sizable majority consistently vote Democratic. So that would appear to make 'liberal' Bellingham voters about 25% of the County's total registered voters.
Another claim of the 'conservatives' is that the Council is dominated by peole who live in Bellingham. Again the facts say different. Only two County Council members live in Bellingham, the other five live in unincorporated (rural) Whatcom County.
If the 'conservative' theory that district-only voting would make things fairer to them held any water, then Council District #3 should be the "fairest" with only 20% of the registered voters living in Bellingham.
Again, the facts don't bare that out. In 2005 progressive Carl Weimer was elect to District 3, Position A. Although 'conservatives' and the Bellingham Herald have been claiming otherwise, Carl recieved a majority of the vote within the District 3...
Dec, 4, 2007
District voting opinion clarified
Carl Weimer won his County Council District 3 seat with a majority of votes in his district in the 2005 countywide election.
The Whatcom County Council was considering asking voters to reconsider district-only elections. The Bellingham Herald editorial board urged the council to respect voters’ previous decision and not raise the question for a public vote again. Who would have won, had there been district-only voting at the time, was incorrect and the options for the council were not clear in an editorial headlined “County should leave district voting alone” on page A7 in the Opinion section of the Dec. 4 edition of The Bellingham Herald.
We correct errors of fact promptly and courteously. If you have a correction or clarification, please call Executive Editor Julie Shirley at 715-2261.
Further... this year, the first time we had district-only voting for County Council positions, 'conservatives' didn't put forward any candidate to run against moderate independent Barbara Brenner.
In Council District 2, conservative (and BIAWC yes-man) Sam Crawford won re-election after a tough race and he wouldn't have won were it not for the heavily conservative/Republican urban voters in the City of Lynden.
The truth is, Crawford did only minusculely better with district-only voting than when we still had county-wide voting in 2003:
Whatcom County 2003 General Election
Whatcom County Council Dist 2 Pos B
Mike Kaufman (NP) 47.97%
Sam R. Crawford (NP) 52.03%
Whatcom County 2007 General Election
Whatcom County Council Dist 2 Pos B
NP - KEN MANN 47.51%
NP - SAM R. CRAWFORD 52.49%
What makes 'conservatives' unsuccessful politically isn't discrimination, it's their angry, selfish, mean-spirited, unworkable ideas.
3 comments:
Great Work! Conservatives are morons and they ARE the minority.
I'd be pissed if I were loosing the lie-based control that I had exerted over domination of women, children, natives, minorities, and outsiders since the stone age, too.
What the conservatives don't realize is that their way of life is coming to an end, and they are only postponing the inevitable collapse of their outdated and anachronistic stupidity.
Since county council positions are district-oriented then people elected to those positions should be accountable to who they represent. Would you argue that Washington state voters should be able to vote for all their state representatives not just those in their district?
This issue is certainly not a new one, but it does seem to get reinvented pretty often!
I think the 1920 Census was the one that first showed more Americans living in urban areas than in rural areas. That threw some folks into a real panic, and the number of House Representatives was capped at 435 - where it sits to this day!
I welcome your take on this, as well as your fact-based approach. It's too bad the last Charter Review ballot produced this change. The same arguments could have been made then, too -only in reverse!
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