Let's not change to district elections in Cincinnati City Council. I can't believe I'm writing this. I've always seen selecting council members from clusters of neighborhoods as the pathway to electoral equity for Cincinnati African Americans.
You know -- maybe you'd have some candidates run against each other from, say, mostly white Mount Washington, Mount Lookout and East End. Some others would face off from mostly black Evanston, Avondale and Walnut Hills. At the end of the process, city council would have a composition reflective of the mix of population that makes up the city.
But check it out. On Nov. 4, with an at-large system, Cincinnati came within 370 votes of having its first African-American majority in history -- before the city is mostly African American. As of this writing -- there's soon to be a mandatory recount -- 738 votes separate the Rev. Damon Lynch III from the ninth-place finisher, Councilman David Crowley. So if Lynch had gotten one more than half of those, he'd have replaced Crowley on the nine-member council.
Not that it would have been pleasant. Losing Crowley, a white, labor-union progressive who has always been willing to join the fight for civil rights, would have been unpleasant. Better that, say, Councilman Jim Tarbell, had been replaced, leaving both Lynch and Crowley on council.
Once there's time to pore over the Election Day data, I'll bet it shows that African-American voter turnout was higher than Caucasians, though both groups voted far below their potential. That is what happened in 2001. I'll also wager that blacks voted shorter this time, matching what white votes have been doing for years: marking their ballots for fewer than the nine spots each voter gets for the council race.
Remember that there was a loosely organized movement within at least one sector of the African-American community proposing that voters "pick six and quit." It might have caught on. So by voting mainly for black candidates, with blacks turning out in a little higher numbers than whites, and having black candidates that also appealed to many white voters, blacks nearly put five members on council for the first time ever. Which is something many of us yearn for.
Look. Why can't some political generation figure out that even when a community is mainly white that the black candidates happen to be the individuals who are better suited to run the city? I mean, statistically, shouldn't that happen now and then? Where is it written that until a community is mostly black its council isn't mostly black?
The fact that it never happens shows that white people vote racially. Yes, some blacks get the votes of some whites. But I know of no majority white community with a mostly black city council. Only rarely do majority white communities elect black mayors. Has America ever elected a black president? We could go on and on.
So back to that Crowley-Lynch ninth- and 10th-place finish. There is that situation with over votes, which likely would have put Lynch in the winner's circle. Once again, more than 1,600 ballots were disqualified in this recent election because voters punched for more than the allowed nine candidates.
Hamilton County Board of Elections member Dan Radford has even asked for an administrative report that will show where this over voting occurred. Likely it will show it's largely an African-American phenomenon in Cincinnati, though it's not because of race. The correlation will be with economics; in Cincinnati, more African Americans are poor than whites. But the report, I believe, will also show it happened in mostly white communities like Lower Price Hill and East End. It's because of economics, experience and newness to voting.
Over-voting has happened in poorer communities across the country among many races. Newer voting technology, such as touch-screen voting computers -- soon to be mandated because of the 2000 fiasco in Florida -- will instantly stop it. The machine will not allow you to finish the voting process until you vote for nine or fewer.
If we had it, Lynch would likely be taking a seat in December on city council, and Cincinnati would have made political and racial history.
That's really the point: Maybe the surest way to maximize African-American participation on Cincinnati City Council is to leave the system alone, to vote down any plan put on the ballot to change to all districts or even a mix of at-large members and those elected from wards.
Clearly, the devil is in the lines with district elections. Whoever decides what neighborhoods constitute each ward controls, in most cases, what the racial makeup of council will be -- and likely even which incumbents will get back on council.
Some current council members live in the same neighborhoods. Would some have to move? If not, one incumbent might knock off another. Would white decision-makers draw the lines to ensure that council is majority white, or at least stack the deck in that favor?
After seeing this past election, many of us who thought reform was a chipper idea are now thinking we just love tradition.
Yes, I know that if some white people in Mount Washington, Hyde Park, Mount Lookout, Price Hill and Westwood tightly organized to vote for only whites and for less than nine, we could have an electoral dogfight that would yield a seven- or eight-member white majority.
But I don't believe that whites or blacks will universally vote strictly along racial lines ever. Judging from this past election, with some technological safeguards, that old, friendly, at-large shoe is the best system.
Damn, I never thought I'd hear myself say that.
PUTTIN' OUT THE BONE appears monthly.
