Greenbelt, a city that prides itself on its heritage as a New Deal-era social experiment, is finding its commitment to inclusiveness tested as two black candidates contend for seats on its all-white City Council in Tuesday’s elections.
Until this year, only two blacks had ever run for the council and none had been elected, even though blacks account for nearly half the 21,000 residents of the 6-square-mile city just outside the Capital Beltway, according to the most recent census estimates. Asians and Hispanics make up 20 percent.
The disparity has caught the attention of the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP. Both filed complaints last year, prompting the Justice Department to take a closer look at whether the Maryland city’s election practices comply with the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
(corrected paragraph:) That investigation remains open, the department said Thursday. But residents of the largely liberal enclave are left to ask themselves whether their electoral system discriminates against minorities, or whether something else is to blame.
For Kathleen Norvell, a Greenbelt resident and ACLU member who disparaged the rights organization’s interference, it is simply a matter that the city’s black voters have never taken an interest in local politics.
“It’s a theoretical community,” she said of Greenbelt’s black residents, most of whom are clustered in rental units on one side of the city and are more transient than the mostly white homeowners.
“If people don’t want to be involved, you can’t make them,” she said.
But civil rights groups and electoral experts point a finger at the city’s at-large voting system, in which candidates must campaign for votes in every part of the community. This makes it hard for candidates with less time and money at their disposal to compete, they say.
“Certain communities get deprived of a voice,” said Timothy F. Maloney, a former Maryland delegate who practices law in Greenbelt. “The system … favors longtime residents and property owners over new residents and renters. That is a fact.”
As evidence, the reform advocates point to the nearby city of Bowie, which switched in 2001 from an at-large system to a hybrid at-large/single member district system. Since then, it has seen a steady increase in black candidates and elected officials from the new single-member districts.
Greenbelt was urged to take similar action in a February 2008 letter from Deborah A. Jeon, legal director of the ACLU of Maryland, on behalf of the ACLU and the NAACP.
One of Ms. Jeon’s main concerns, she said, was a vast section on the west side of Greenbelt, comprising mostly renters and minorities. The area had voter turnout as low as 2 percent in recent local elections. Yet voter turnout in the same precinct was 69 percent in last year’s presidential election, when President Obama was on the ballot.
The City Council settled instead on a narrower reform, expanding the council from five members to seven. The two new seats, they argued, would create an opportunity for minorities to get into office without having to displace one of the five white incumbents.
The reform has been at least a partial success. Two blacks are among four new candidates seeking seats on the council in Tuesday’s election.
“Greenbelt could very well elect its first African-American official and that would be nice,” Ms. Jeon said. “We’re watching to see if community outreach and more seats results in more participation.”
But Joaquin Avila, a Seattle University School of Law professor and national voting rights specialist, said that while adding seats to an at-large election system “theoretically increases the chances for a black candidate squeaking by, [it] does not constitute access” as required by the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Bob Manzi, a private attorney who represents the city, disagrees.
“Courts have not struck down at-large voting itself,” he said, “This election depends on voter turnout; it’s just that simple.” He added, “If blacks voted as a block, they could control the council in Greenbelt, and there’s nothing the white community could do about it.”
That is unlikely to happen on Tuesday, however, judging by a series of interviews with Greenbelt residents at the Centerway Mini-Mart in Roosevelt Center, an Art Deco plaza that serves as the city’s civic hub.
“I think it’s a good idea to expand the council and get some different perspective,” said Jerry Olek, 66, a retired intelligence officer who sees problems with apportionment of votes in elections in general. “If you can get a fair system through, great. But can you? This is a work-around as we move toward fair apportionment.”
But a woman who declined to give her name said she was “not interested in voting in this election.”
And a man who was interviewed as he left the Mini-Mart said, “I have a lot on my mind, I don’t have time to vote.”
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