The Seattle Redistricting Commission has settled on new borders for the city’s council districts that will shave off only small areas of District 3 representing Capitol Hill and the Central District to help balance disproportionate population growth in the city’s core.
The vote for the new Seattle City Council borders came Monday as the commissioners are nearing finalization of the new districts, backing off a last-minute adjustment that would have also carved off a portion of the University of Washington area to join D3 represented by Kshama Sawant.
A final vote on the plan is expected November 8th. The commission continues to take feedback here.
The hoped-for final border changes for District 3 include carving off a small area of the Central District south of I-90 into South Seattle’s District 2 and shifting the highrise-zoned swath of First Hill along I-5 into downtown’s District 7. D3, meanwhile, will gain areas of Eastlake that had been in District 4. You can explore the final map here.
The agreement culminates months of proposals and negotiations as the commission attempted to meet legal requirements while rebalancing populations in the districts across the city. When initially adopted for the 2015 election, each district was drawn to include roughly 88,000 people. Seattle growth has not been distributed proportionately. District 3, including Capitol Hill, the Central District, and First Hill, had grown proportionately larger reaching around 107,000 residents and needed its borders to shrink. Each district will now represent a few more than 106,000 people.
In the end, the new D3 will be slightly more white and just as Democratic. Only D1 representing West Seattle and D6 representing Northwest Seattle will have a higher proportion of white residents than D3’s 63%.
The final redistricting debate centered on changes that will split the Magnolia neighborhood across Districts 6 and 7. Commissioner and former Mayor Greg Nickels brought a last-minute plan that would have kept Magnolia intact with a huge change sliding South Lake Union into Sawant’s D3 and swapping Montlake into D4 but the Seattle Times reports the rest of the commission “didn’t want to consider major adjustments at the last minute without adequate public outreach and input.”
The changes based on demographic shifts and population growth have important political implications in determining what kinds of candidates can make it through the primary, and who ultimately gets elected.
Advocates for equity and underrepresented voters celebrated the final Seattle map.
“We did it. We won fair, legal, equitable, renter-empowered, community-led Seattle City Council district map in the first-ever redistricting process,” the Redistricting Justice for Washington group said in a statement.
The new map will go into effect with the 2023 City Council election, when, after defeating last year’s recall attempt, D3 representative Sawant faces her next reelection battle.
Meanwhile, the November 8th election is in its final stretch with a roster of important decisions including the race for King County Prosecutor. You can find CHS election coverage here.
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