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Tillotson right on at-large seats
By Doug McLeod
Contributor
Published October 30, 2009
Daily News publisher Dolph Tillotson recently lamented that, a decade ago, Galveston City Council should have shown the courage to advocate three at-large seats and four district seats.
He said the present “at-large mayor and six single-member council districts” system not only has resulted in voter turnouts of only a few hundred people in several of the districts but also has disenfranchised the majority of those wanting to cast votes.
I could not agree more. At present, in other words, voters may vote for only one council member and the mayoral candidate.
It is therefore no wonder that so few people now have an interest in voting — why bother?
The irony of Tarris Woods, David Miller and Leon Phillips insisting that public housing projects be rebuilt to preserve District 1 for minority representation is that Galveston had African-American and Latino representatives on the city council from the 1960s under the former “seven at-large seats” system.
How and why did the former system work to provide diversity? Council and mayoral elections formerly drew 10,000 to 12,000 voters — and with a great deal of enthusiasm.
All mayoral and city council candidates ran at large, and it was not unusual to have between 20 and 24 candidates file for the city council.
Minorities could “single shot” their candidates, thus providing greater proportionate numbers for their choices.
To understand this concept, one only has to review “cumulative voting” — it is quite simple to grasp.
On occasions, there were runoffs with four or six, or as many as 12, candidates. The mayor pro-tem was selected after the election by the city council on the basis of which council member had received the largest number of votes. (When I was on the city council in the early 1970s, I won the mayor pro-tem’s position for being top vote-getter in 1975.)
Among the first minorities, T.D. Armstrong and the Rev. David Harris — both African-Americans — served on the council in the 1960s and 1970s respectively.
Paul Quintero was the first Latino to win a city council seat, in 1973.
It was that year also when Harris won the mayor pro-tem designation with the largest amount of votes cast.
In summary, an at-large system did and will result in diverse representation.
Doug McLeod spent 14 years, from 1969-1983, in elected office in Galveston and is also a former school board president and three-term state legislator.
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