Letter to the Editor: No At-Large Voting System for Naperville

Dear Editor:

Hybrid or District systems increase costs:

Many cite a study by Southwick which was written 16 years ago by an author who was not a political scientist nor an economist. There have been many other studies since then that contradict this position ("Local Logrolling? Examining the Impact of District Representation on Distributive Politics" -Burnett, Kogan Aug 2012).

In addition, looking closer to home, since our neighbors in Wheaton went to a hybrid model, their costs have gone down. If you think it will add costs due to slush funds or discretionary funds, that can happen with an at-large system just as easily as a hybrid one, all it takes is for a majority of the council to approve such slush funds.

With a hybrid system, the four at-large representatives could all live in one district thus having five representatives in one:

What’s to stop all eight council members and the mayor from living in one neighborhood today? At least with a hybrid model, the maximum is LIMITED to five. 

The voters in 2010 were not informed as to what they were voting for:

The argument is that 2010 was a high turn-out election with a very short cycle and that the voters were uninformed. To counter that, this election cycle is even shorter. On a side note, if all those that turned out were uninformed, wouldn’t by the randomness of statistics just as many “ignorant” voters vote against the proposition as those that voted for it? Purely “uninformed” voters wouldn’t turn out a 66% to 34% result. Are you claiming that only the 34% that voted for at-large were informed and the 66% that voted against it were “ignorant”?

With districts, council members will “horse trade” votes for their pet projects:

Even if votes were traded between two council members, there are still 7 other council members to balance against this. Also, what stops the current council from doing the exact same thing for their “pet projects”?

With districts, you’d only have one member representing you:

In order for this statement to be correct, you have to be making the logical assumption that the other district representatives only care about their district and that the 3 at-large members and the mayor don’t represent you at all. If that’s the case, then logically it can be applied to the current system and said that NONE of the council represents you. Is that an argument you really want to go with?

Naperville has voted districts down twice before:

Those two elections were in 1980s and 1990s when Naperville had populations of ~42,000 and 85,000 respectively. Naperville is now ~150,000 residents with many new businesses. We have different issues today than we did then. If you want to point to history for a reference, what’s wrong with including the most recent vote? Many more of the residents that voted in 2010 are still residents as opposed to residents that voted in the 80’s and 90’s that may since have left Naperville. I contend that those previous elections represent less than 25% and 50% respectively of the voters that voted in the most recent example and are therefore less pertinent to the discussion.

Naperville doesn’t need to “experiment” with forms of government:

But I guess it is okay for us to experiment with red light camera systems, citywide WiFi, glitchy emergency radio systems, smart grids, electric or hybrid car charging stations, etc. At least hybrid representation has been around for many, many years but somehow in this case we’d be “experimenting”. 

With all that being said, I hope that just as many people turn out to vote for our local election as did for the 2010 national one AND come informed. Also, I’m sure that the Yes-At-Large crowd is banking on the fact that fewer than 18,000 voters will turn out (approximate number in the 2011 election) and that they will be able to overturn the will of the people with even fewer votes for it than they had in 2010.

Thank you for taking the time to read and think about this issue.

Michael Anderson

Naperville Resident