State Voting Rights Act may mean trouble for Yakima's system

YAKIMA, Wash. — If state lawmakers adopt voting rights legislation intended to assure minority representation, Yakima could find itself entangled in expensive litigation.

Seattle University law professor David Perez, who helped draft legislation to establish a state Voting Rights Act, points to what happened in Modesto, Calif., after that state adopted a similar act in 2001.

Like Yakima, Modesto had a sizable Latino population -- more than 25 percent. But only one Latino had been elected to its City Council since 1911. Yakima with a 41 percent Latino population -- has never elected a Latino to its City Council.

Modesto paid $3 million in 2008 to settle a lawsuit brought by Latino residents who said the city's at-large City Council elections disenfranchised minority voters and violated that state's Voting Rights Act. The city fought the suit all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court before justices refused to hear it.

"We're going to have our city of Modesto case if the state Voting Rights Act is enacted. And I would wager it's going to be the city of Yakima," Perez said.

Yakima's hybrid of at-large and district-based elections are at the heart of the proposed act, which is similar to the landmark federal legislation from 1965.

"I know if this passed Yakima would have (only) district-based elections pretty soon," Perez said.

Details are contained in House Bill 2612, which is sponsored by Rep. Phyllis Gutierrez Kenney, a Seattle Democrat who grew up in Toppenish and Wapato; and in the companion Senate Bill 6381, sponsored by Sen. Margarita Prentice, D-Renton.

The proposed Washington Voting Rights Act of 2012, which mirrors California's act, would prohibit at-large and district-based elections held in a manner that deny a "protected class" -- in Yakima's case, Latinos -- from electing candidates of its choice or somehow dilutes their voice as a voting bloc.

Those challenging a local government's election system would have to prove in court a pattern of racially polarized voting. Plaintiffs would not have to demonstrate an intent on the part of the local government or voters to discriminate, but simply that the results diminish the clear voice of a sizable minority.

Proponents of the legislation point east of the Cascades, and to Yakima in particular, as evidence of the need for such a law.

In 2011, the local advocacy group Central Washington Progress gathered enough signatures to put the question of district-based elections before city voters on the grounds that the current system suppresses the city's diversity of views at the ballot box. About 58 percent of voters rejected the proposal, which also included 10-year term limits for council members who are elected to four-year terms.

Both bills have passed through their committees despite protests from local legislators, such as Rep. David Taylor, R-Moxee, the ranking Republican on the House State Government and Tribal Affairs Committee.

"It's the same thing the voters of Yakima turned down," Taylor said. "What they're doing with this legislation is telling voters they made the wrong decision."

Taylor said the legislation would also be costly for local governments, as it allows for any resident who brings suit under the law to recoup any legal expenses from a county or municipality. It specifically denies local governments the right to recoup any legal costs unless the charges are "frivolous, unreasonable or without foundation."

The legislation was amended to exclude statewide elections and municipalities with fewer than 1,000 residents.

Taylor said the legislation is one of many proposals from Democrats this session aimed to distract from the state's budget woes.

"We should be creating jobs," Taylor said. "With this we help keep one attorney flush with revenue as he goes around suing local jurisdictions."

Perez said representative democracy requires the consent of the governed, but Yakima's system denies nearly half the city's population adequate representation in government. He said data show voting trends in areas of Yakima with the greatest numbers of Latinos are consistently countered and defeated by the at-large Caucasian majority.

"Sometimes numbers don't lie," Perez said. "This is one of those times."

Besides Yakima voters turning thumbs down on the district-based elections proposal in 2010, which Perez says reflects the need for the legislation, supporters argue the defeat of the city's only Latino councilwoman in 2009 also had to do more with ethnicity than politics.

Sonia Rodriguez became the council's first Latino member earlier that year when she was appointed to fill a vacancy created after councilman Norm Johnson was elected to the state House.

Rodriguez lost by 11 percent to conservative talk radio host Dave Ettl later that year in what some saw as backlash over her appointment to the council.

Opponents, however, described Rodriguez as a liberal trial lawyer at odds with Yakima's conservative voter base.

The legislation has until 5 p.m. Tuesday to pass through at least one house of the Legislature to survive the annual cutoff for policy legislation.

* Mike Faulk can be reached at 509-577-7675 or mfaulk@yakimaherald.com. Follow him on Twitter at @Mike_Faulk.