Editorial: Schedule charter vote to ensure participation

Spokane City Councilwoman Nancy McLaughlin offered a reasonable idea last week when she suggested putting three proposed City Charter amendments on the Nov. 2 ballot. Her recommendation sputtered and died.

A committee has spent the past year combing through the decade-old charter, eventually suggesting a dozen or more changes, mostly just to tidy up and clarify the document. But council members had concerns about putting the whole package on a 2010 ballot that already contains nine statewide measures.

The potential for attention overload on voters’ part is one reason for the hesitancy. Printing and postage costs associated with a larger ballot are also concerns.

As a result, it looks like the package of City Charter changes will not go to the voters for another year.

McLaughlin’s proposal? Put three noncontroversial amendments on the Nov. 2 general election ballot – not enough to seriously tax voters’ concentration powers or to force a bulky two-page ballot with the added expenses it would invite – and save the others for later.

For the most part, the council gave the extended waiting period a lackadaisical shrug, explaining that the city has survived the charter’s imperfections for a decade without significant consequences; another year won’t matter.

Commendably, council members foresee using the delay to hold public meetings at which the amendments can be explained and discussed.

Well and good. But by rescheduling council action to May, it appears the timing is designed to put the package on next August’s 2011 primary election ballot. Unfortunately, primary elections attract lower voter turnouts than general elections. And odd-year elections, with fewer high-profile offices at stake, attract lower voter turnouts than even-year elections – such as 2010.

The council’s determination to host public-education forums at the front end of the process is laudable, but it needs to be complemented with a commitment to promote the widest voter participation at the far end, too.

After all, the voters of this city and this state haven’t just accepted their role in making policy decisions; they have demanded it. If the City Council wants to avoid burdening them, it should reconsider McLaughlin’s proposal to divide the package into bite-size portions.

However they do it, a decision as important as revising the city’s foundational governing document deserves to be rendered by the fullest possible voter turnout, not in an off-year primary election.