Brady: no at-large voting

By Billy Taylor
Special to the Coastal Point

State Rep. Pete Schwartzkopf (D – Rehoboth Beach) had led the charge in taking the issue to Brady, asking her to interpret what some citizens believed was vague language in the county charter allowing for all county residents to vote for all county council seats, essentially making them at-large elections.

In a meeting organized by the Sussex County League of Women Voters at the Lewes Library on March 22, Brady and Schwartzkopf, as well as State Sen. George Bunting (D – Bethany Beach) and Rep. Joe Booth (R – Georgetown) addressed the issues.

“If there is to be any at-large seats or any at-large voting for existing seats, that will have to be established through new legislation,” Brady said.

She listed four main factors which contributed to her ruling:

• Elsewhere, when at-large voting is intended in the code, it is distinctly specified as “at-large” in the text.
• Special elections to fill councilmanic vacancies are explicitly district-specific.
• Code interpretation assumes a consistency of standards that would be violated if general councilmanic elections were “at-large” and special elections were district-specific.
• An amendment that was not adopted when the current council was formed would have allowed for three district elections and two at-large seats. This specification implies that the existing seats were not intended to be at-large seats.

All three legislators said that they had expected and agreed with Brady’s ruling.

“We should still do district voting,” Bunting said. “However, I do support two additional at-large seats.”

Booth agreed. “I would have been surprised and shocked if it had turned out any other way,” he said. “You see, changes like this move glacially.”

Schwartzkopf voiced his relief at Brady’s ruling.

“Personally, I didn’t think we’d have a different answer than we do have,” he said. “I think the alternative would have been disastrous. We would have been operating our government incorrectly since 1972.”

District 5 Councilman Vance Phillips was the only member of Sussex County Council to attend the meeting. While not part of the formal presentation panel, he voiced his opinions on the county-wide voting process.

“I believe that there is the possibility that you people may soon be voting for or against me, and I want to win your vote,” Phillips said. “If we had at-large voting, I would probably run. Another possibility is that of a county executive. It is a possibility if a county-wide vision is what is desired.”

Joan Deaver, organizer of Citizens for a Better Sussex, a group that supports county-wide voting for all five members of County Council, said, “I believe in what we’re doing. The only reason I say it’s going to be hard is because we have so much work to do.”

Citizens for a Better Sussex will meet to discuss their next steps in addressing this issue on Tuesday, March 29, at 7 p.m. at the South Coastal Library, in Bethany Beach.