Why Districts?

Why Are Districts Good?

Districts create a true neighborhood champion for everyone.

Council by Districts creates a powerful neighborhood champion whose job is to make sure your neighborhoods’ problems are addressed.  When Council members are elected by Districts, they will have to prioritize neighborhood issues and work with City departments to solve problems such as street light outages, illegal dumping and public safety concerns.

Districts ensure that all areas of the City are served.

Council by Districts require that each area of the City be represented.  In the current, at-large system, the Council has several members who come from the same area of the City, while large areas areas of the City have no Council member living in that area.  Under Districts, Council members would go home every day to the neighborhoods that they serve.  Their neighbors would know that the Council member understands their problems and cares what happens to their neighborhood.

Districts allow diverse communities to elect a Council member to serve their neighborhood.

When Council members are elected by Districts, they will be able to represent the diverse issues and perspectives of the community to the Council table.  Under our current system, neighborhood issues have to compete with citywide concerns, and the issues that matter most to our quality of life get little or no attention.  

Districts will create greater accountability for Council members.

While Districts will force Council members to deal with neighborhood issues, they will also make it easier for Detroiters to hold them accountable for addressing core quality of life issues.  If a community believes that their Council member is not producing results for the community, Districts will empower communities to vote out ineffective members and vote in someone who will better represent the community.

Districts will require Council candidates to create and run neighborhood campaigns in communities to win the privilege of representing that community.

In order to be successful and win the support of the community, Council candidates would have to campaign on neighborhood issues in the neighborhoods.  Districts create an environment that encourages candidates to knock doors and talk to voters about community issues versus the at-large, name recognition-based elections that Detroit currently has.

Districts will reduce the influence of big money in elections, and allow neighborhood candidates to emerge.

The cost to run a city-wide election under the current at-large system is extremely high and creates barriers for neighborhood champions to step up and run.  Instead of relying on large campaign contributions, District candidates can focus less on raising money, and more on talking to voters about neighborhood issues.

Districts will bring an end to ballots with 180 Council candidates.

In the past, to win a seat, Council candidates have relied largely on name-recognition to stand out from fields of 180 candidates or more.  Districts will create elections where voters can choose from the most qualified candidate for the job, versus the one whose name with which they are most familiar.

Districts will bring Detroit in-line with the top cities in the U.S. for representative city government.

Detroit is the only large city in the United States that elects all of its Council members at-large. Districts in Detroit will create representative government on par with other major cities.