Knoxville voters should reject referendum establishing at-large electoral system
Ballot Measure for City Council elections would effectively eliminate district representation – a hallmark of representative democracy.
This column originally appeared in the Knoxville News Sentinel on Sunday, October 7, 2024.
This November, Knoxville voters will consider a major overhaul of the city’s electoral system.
The referendum may seem simple, but the choice facing Knoxville voters is more than just a technical change to how we elect our City Council members. It’s about how we ensure every part of our city — rich and poor, conservative and liberal, north and south, east and west — has a voice in the political process.
Designed to balance the priorities of individual districts with those of the entire city, Knoxville’s City Council has six district seats and three at-large seats. District representatives are nominated by district voters in the primary but elected by the entire city in the general. However, despite local opposition, this unconventional method for electing district seats was recently outlawed by the state legislature.
In response, Councilman Andrew Roberto introduced a charter amendment proposing a fully at-large system where all candidates, including those running for district seats, would be elected by voters citywide.
Proponents claim that city unity is the goal. But the proposal overlooks a fundamental truth: democracy thrives when it is close to the people, when representatives know the streets they walk, the neighborhoods they serve and the communities they call home.
District representation matters
Proponents say the at-large system will ensure all council members have a citywide focus. But they fail to acknowledge the ballot measure, if approved, would effectively eliminate district representation – a hallmark of representative democracy.
The proposal includes residency requirements for district seats. However, living in a district doesn't guarantee candidates will prioritize its interests or be accountable to its residents. Instead, the proposal creates a system in which someone could be elected to represent a district seat without receiving even a single vote from their district.
Such a system would also incentivize candidates to focus their campaigns on high-turnout areas outside the district they aim to represent and encourage messaging that appeals to citywide majorities, ultimately depriving residents of candidates attuned to the specific concerns of neighborhoods.
Data from recent elections demonstrates this risk. While each district contains roughly the same number of residents, voter turnout varies significantly across districts.
District 2 and District 4, two of the city’s wealthiest and least diverse districts, have together accounted for at least 55% of voters in the last five primary elections. By contrast, District 3 — one of the city’s less affluent areas — has on average accounted for only 12% of the vote.
Therein lies the problem. Under a fully at-large model, high-turnout districts will wield outsized influence, allowing them to effectively choose representatives for the entire city, including for districts that do not share their interests or needs.
An at-large system would also raise the cost of running a successful campaign, sidelining candidates without the financial resources to compete, especially against well-funded opponents. Money buys name recognition, and this proposal will make money in politics matter more than it ever has.
The result? A City Council increasingly disconnected from the communities that need representation the most.
We tried this before – and it failed
Knoxville has tried this before, and it failed.
In 1960, the city voted to abolished districts and establish a fully at-large electoral system. Less than a decade later, and partly in response to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, city voters recognized the at-large system’s failure to deliver effective representation and overwhelmingly passed a referendum to restore district representation in 1968.
As the political theorists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt write, "History doesn’t repeat itself. But it rhymes.” The proposed charter amendment fails to heed the lessons of our own history, opting instead to repeat a mistake from our past.
Voters should reject this charter amendment
No electoral system is perfect, but the downsides of district-only elections are limited and greatly outweighed by a winner-takes-all system that eliminates district-level representation. After all, a system where district representatives are elected by district voters is not a radical idea but a proven electoral model – one used by most major cities across Tennessee and the United States.
This begs the question: why are politicians in Knoxville so determined to avoid having the same election system as nearly every other major city? And why do they support a model they would oppose if it were applied to County Commission or the Board of Education?
Knoxville voters should reject this charter amendment. Not because it is merely imperfect but because it undermines a central tenet of representative democracy — that local leaders should come from and be accountable to the neighborhoods they serve.
Hancen Sale is a Knoxville resident and the former Government Affairs and Policy Director at East Tennessee Realtors.