Federal Judge Rules On District Voting

All seven Pasco City Council seats will be up for election this year after a federal judge ruled Friday that the city can move forward with a new way of electing council members. The decision arises from a lawsuit that claims Latino candidates in Pasco aren't given an equal opportunity because of the current council at-large district system.

The City of Wenatchee, with about a 30% latino population has been studying the same issue more than a year and the council appears ready to transition to either a 5 or 7 district voting process as early as 2019.   Candidates would run in their districts in the primary election and district wide in the November general election.

In Pasco, the city proposed a plan to form six districts and one at-large seat and U.S. District Judge Lonny R. Suko determined the plan legally acceptable and decided it should be implemented immediately.  Three of the six will be Latino majority districts.

The ACLU of Washington has said that Pasco's election system violates the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting Latino votes.