Election reforms<\/strong><\/p>\nSeveral potential recommendations deal with elections. One major change could be a recommendation to move the county to a ranked choice voting system, where voters rank all of the candidates in order of preference. If a candidate gets more than 50 percent of first choice preferences, then that candidate wins, but if not, the candidate with the fewest first choices is eliminated. The process would repeat itself until one candidate reaches a majority.<\/p>\n
Commission documents said this form of runoff voting is already being used by a number of jurisdictions across the country. It can increase representation for historically underrepresented communities like women and people of color. Pierce County approved a similar system in 2006, but it was later repealed in the 2009 election by voters.<\/p>\n
“I really think that ranked choice voting would help us encourage more politically diverse candidates and that it would kind of tone down the negativity that we see,” Nixon said.<\/p>\n
The commission could also recommend the county create a public financing system for political campaigns, similar to Seattle’s Democracy Voucher Program. Seattle’s program was approved by voters in 2015 and a subsequent University of Washington study found the number of Seattle residents involved in providing campaign contributions increased after the program was created. However, historically underrepresented groups were less likely to participate.<\/p>\n
Nearly 21,000 people used the vouchers in Seattle, but older residents were three times more likely to participate than younger residents. And while 4 percent of white Seattelites returned their vouchers, only 2.4 percent of black residents did the same. On top of this, 5 percent of people earning more than $75,000 annually participated compared to 2 percent of those making less than $30,000.<\/p>\n
Bigger council?<\/strong><\/p>\nExpanding the King County Council is also on the agenda. The council represents the 13th most populous county in the U.S., with just over 2.1 million residents. In 1992, voters approved a charter to increase the size of the council from nine to 13 members, a decision that was later reversed in 2004.<\/p>\n
Increasing the size of the council could provide more direct representation for residents, Nixon said.<\/p>\n
“Here we are in a county with a huge geography and a huge population and we’ve got just nine people,” he said.<\/p>\n
The commission has been holding community meetings that haven’t been well attended. A meeting on Feb. 19 in Seattle brought in less than 10 people, and no one showed up to a public meeting the following night in Fall City. Commission co-chair Louise Miller, a former state representative and county council member, said she hopes to get more comments on their proposals.<\/p>\n
“We thought it was important to try and get out and get input from people in the community,” Miller said.<\/p>\n
Miller said residents can also share their ideas at regular meetings, which are held roughly once a month. The next public meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. Feb. 26 at the Federal Way Community Center. <\/ins><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A commission is reviewing the county’s charter and will make recommendations by May. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":463,"featured_media":39262,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,24],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-39261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-northwest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39261"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/463"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39261"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=39261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}