By Chart Courtesy of the Cincinnati Election Reform Commission Final Report

Question: Do you think the current system of city government provides effective leadership?

Cincinnati voters might get the chance in November to radically alter the way city council is elected. A year ago, Mayor Charlie Luken and Vice Mayor Alicia Reece moved to create an Electoral Reform Commission to report on the possibility of a district or proportional representation system.

Under district representation, council members would run in districts instead of campaigning citywide.

If election officials counted votes by proportional representation (PR) instead of voting by district, voters would rank their choice of candidates. That way, a candidate winning 10 percent of first-choice votes has a very good shot at a seat.

"It's a way to make sure that small portions of the populations are represented on council," says Donald J. Mooney Jr., who chaired the Election Reform Commission.

If the city voted using PR, it's possible that the Rev. Damon Lynch III -- the alternately beloved and deplored former president of the Black United Front, who narrowly missed a seat on council last year -- could be a councilman today.

Cincinnati instituted a PR system in the 1920s, but voters eliminated it in the mid-1950s. Most recognized a racist motivation in the elimination of a system that favored minorities. The move blocked Ted Berry from becoming the city's first African-American mayor, although he later won that position through the at-large election system still in use.

Only one other city in the country uses PR today: Cambridge, Mass.

"Part of it is it's so darn confusing when you try to explain to people how their votes are counted," Mooney says.

'No one is damaged'
It would have been easier to explain if the city had funded studies, according to Marilyn Ormsbee, a Charter Committee representative on the commission. Instead, the commission had to tap the business sector, which wasn't interested in subsidizing a study on a PR system that might mitigate its influence, she says.

Furthermore, she thinks the mayor's appointees skewed the process from the beginning. At one of the first meetings Elijah Scott, one of Luken's appointees, made clear, "We're here to recommend an executive mayor and districts. The mayor called us and asked us to do this, and we're doing it," Ormsbee says.

Each political party -- Democratic, Republican and Charter -- appointed three people to the commission and the mayor, a Democrat, appointed four.

The resolution that created the commission says it should examine alternatives, which means to study and report, not necessarily to make recommendations, Ormsbee says.

A poll of Cincinnati voters by Public Opinion Strategies, which has polled Cincinnatians since 1993, indicated less support for districts than the current at-large system. While 20 percent of voters polled said they'd prefer the district system, 19 percent preferred proportional representation, 23 percent leaned toward a mixed at-large and district system and 33 percent favored retaining the at-large election of council.

But neighborhood-based council districts would serve as a form of campaign finance reform, the commission's report says. In 2001, the nine winning candidates spent an average of more than $168,000 per candidate, according to Ohio Citizen Action.

"The result can be council members overly reliant on wealthy contributors and special interests, and largely immune from defeat," the commission's report says. "A Cincinnatian who wants to serve his or her neighborhood and city should not be expected to compete citywide and raise $100,000 plus to have a chance to win."

Incumbents generally retain their seats. The last council election saw only one upset, when incumbent Republican Chris Monzel lost and Republican Sam Malone won, nudging the number of African-American members to four of nine for the first time.

That history of inequity prompted the Cincinnati branch of the NAACP to commission its own study a month after the council motion "to ensure full and fair representation of African Americans, other minorities and women in Cincinnati city government."

Though the two bodies proceeded independently, in February they both recommended electing city council by districts.

There are two ways to get the recommendations on the Nov. 2 ballot: by a two-thirds vote of council or by activists collecting 6,770 signatures on referendum petitions.

"This is a comprehensive reform proposal," Mooney says. "It would seem to me that no one is damaged if the public gets the chance to decide, to debate these issues."

Councilman Pat DeWine seconds that. He's probably the council member most enthusiastic for districts, but even he is ambivalent.

"I like the accountability," he says. "I don't like the fact I think it might be polarizing."

'At each other's throats'
DeWine doubts there are six votes on council to put districts on the ballot, but Councilman David Pepper introduced an ordinance for districts June 8, a month after he submitted a proposal for a new mayor-council form of government.

Pepper says, though, it's a safe political guess as to why council would shy from districts.

"You don't see many political bodies voting to remove themselves from office," he says.

District proponents allege that the African Americans on council, three of whom live in Bond Hill, are looking out for their own interests -- as are incumbents from other districts who also might be threatened by the change.

But there's also a legitimate concern about pitting neighborhoods against each other in an already divided city, Pepper says.

Ormsbee agrees.

"It may work in cities where people are more harmonious, but right now everybody's at each other's throats," she says. "What could possibly be worse at this point in time?"

If people think they'll be better off with one representative, they should consider what they have now, she says.

"They've got nine representatives they can go to now, though they may not live right down the street," Ormsbee says.

Councilman Christopher Smitherman also expressed concern about the proposal.

"African Americans agitate for district representation because they don't feel they have a voice on council," he says.

But by citing the similar recommendations in the NAACP report, Smitherman thinks district proponents want to confuse African Americans into thinking the districts proposed in the commission's report were approved by the NAACP. He calls the discussion a "bait and switch.

In fact, even the districts proposed by the commission create African-American majorities, though mostly slight, in five of nine districts. However, that can't be taken at face value in a city in which only 35 percent of eligible voters voted in the last election.

Mooney says he's going to try to work with the NAACP to put on the ballot a proposal with broad support. He says his pitch to council is that, even if they don't support districts themselves, the public should get the right to vote.

But Pepper points out that argument could hold true for any issue that comes before council. He won't begrudge any council member's reluctance to put it on the ballot.

"They at the very least have to be somewhat comfortable with the proposal before you pass it on to the voters," Pepper says.

As for giving chances, why not give the current system a chance, Ormsbee asks.

"The current system is not broken as designed, but you're not using it as it was designed," she says. "Quite frankly, everything showed that change was needed, but this was not the way to do it. The problem isn't the way you're doing it. The problem is who's doing it." ©