August 10, 2016 - 8:44 am

Last week, the Washington State chapter of the ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging the city of Pasco’s at-large election system for violating the Voting Rights Act. The ACLU alleges the city has been unlawfully diluting the vote of Latinos in elections, preventing any Latino candidates from winning City Council seats.

This lack of minority representation is, unfortunately, not unique to Pasco. In 2014 Yuko Kodama interviewed University of Washington Political Science and Adjunct Law Professor, Matt Barreto, who said Washington State has some of the worst levels of equal representation in local government, and warned that voter rights lawsuits were on the horizon.