Providence, RI mulls hybrid PR system

Posted on October 27th, 2007 Jack No comments  Print This Post

The Providence Journal reports City Council interest in adding some number of at-large seats to its ranks. Currently 15 councilpersons are elected in single-member districts.

Councilman Seth Yurdin, representing Fox Point, has put forth a plan that would dramatically increase the size of the council, to 21 members. It would keep the existing 15 wards, and add 6 at-large seats. The citywide seats would be elected by a method of proportional representation known as the single transferable vote to ensure that council members come from across the city, and not solely from economically powerful areas.

A competing proposal calls for adding just two at-large seats elected under the bloc vote.

Dubbing the PR plan “fifteen and six,” a good letter to the editor by a RI state legislator gets into some of the considerations: citywide accountability, campaign costs, women and minority representation and council size more generally.

Council domination – by a neighborhood, class or some organized interest – usually comes up when people start talking about moving away from wards toward at-large elections. STV is a good way to address those concerns.

Most (but not all) local-level electoral system reform talk happens on the west coast, so it’s fun to see the same in a ‘classic’ northeastern city like Providence.