Kent election revamping effort falls short

An initiative campaign for neighborhood-based voting in Kent has stalled out, supporters say. That means the big south-of-Seattle suburb will continue at-large City Council elections for the foreseeable future.

The Kent for Districts campaign turned in more than 13,000 petition signatures last month, but won’t advance to a vote on the February ballot, as intended, because too many of the signatures were declared invalid.

The campaign needed 10,572 signatures from voters registered in Kent. Instead, about 7,400 passed muster when reviewed by King County Elections.

Some signers weren’t registered to vote and others were registered elsewhere, elections officials told the campaign, which suspects a number of people who signed live in unincorporated areas near Kent. The campaign collected signatures not only at homes, but also at events, stores and transit hubs.

“Despite the tremendous energy and passion that fueled this campaign, the numbers have shown us that we will not be getting on the ballot this time,” the Kent for Districts campaign said in a statement this week. “As a result, we have made the difficult decision to put the campaign on an indefinite pause.”

The campaign, which launched early this year, proposed switching five of seven Kent City Council seats to district-based voting. Currently, voters throughout the city elect the mayor and all seven council seats in King County’s third-largest city.

Proponents said the move would promote equitable representation. They said politics in the sprawling city of 136,000 have traditionally been dominated by leaders from Kent’s more affluent East Hill neighborhoods, resulting in less representation for its West Hill and Valley neighborhoods.

Running for a district seat is less expensive than running at-large, the proponents added, also making the case that district voting could boost voter turnout, which was 24% in Kent last November, versus 46% in Seattle.

Led by law school student Mónica Mendoza-Castrejón and housing advocate Cliff Cawthon, Kent for Districts was endorsed by three Kent City Council members: John Boyd, Marli Larimer and Brenda Fincher.

The campaign also secured support from U.S. Rep. Adam Smith, state Sen. Karen Keiser and state Rep. Mia Gregerson, plus the King County Democrats and the Martin Luther King Jr. County Labor Council.

More than two dozen Washington cities elect some or all of their council members via districts, according to a list compiled last year by the nonprofit Municipal Research and Services Center. Seattle is the only King County city on the list, having switched seven of nine seats to district voting in 2015.

In its statement, Kent for Districts called for the Kent City Council to take up their idea and put district voting on a ballot. Council President Satwinder Kaur didn’t immediately return requests for comment Thursday.

This story includes material from The Seattle Times archives.