There's been some push back in the comments (!) because I've pointed out that none of the nine Seattle city council members are renters—while 52 percent of the city is made up of renters. There hasn't been a renter on the council since the early 2000s when there was just one, Judy Nicastro. 

The charge is that I sound like I'm writing for Pravda instead of PubliCola.

But why shouldn't class be an issue? Why is class representation such a bogeyman when race representation carried the day (as it should have) in an August U.S. District Court of Eastern Washington case.

In that decision, the Court ruled that Yakima had to blow up its city council election system because, in a town where 41 percent of the population is Latino, there was not a single Latino member on its seven-member city council.

Unfortunately, class is not a protected class. 

Race may be a taboo issue in America, but at least—because race is a protected class—race discrimination is actionable. Unfortunately, class is not a protected class. 

I'm hardly going out on a limb to sense some class discrimination when it comes to electoral representation. It used to be in the United States that voting rights were tied to owning property. 

Seattle blew up its city council election system last year with the idea of making council seats more accessible and council members more diverse. We vote by district now. One metric to see if district elections ultimately deliver on its goals will certainly be whether or not 52 percent of the city remains unrepresented.